Norwegian Would

Four in Recital

2011-10-14T07:45:00.001+08:00

Guitar Friends and

Cebu Luthiers Education Foundation

With the support of the UP School of Economics

Present

Four in a Classical Guitar Recital

CATHERINE BELLE

CRISTINA H. LOZANO

MARGA ABEJO

JENNY DE VERA

6 p.m. October 15, 2011

Elizabeth Yu Gokongwei Hall

UP School of Economics, Diliman

Admission is free. Cocktails will be served.

CATHERINE BELLE

Catherine Belle first took up classical guitar at the age of 13, enrolling in the UP College of Music Extension Program. She trained under Nathan Manimtim and Ferdinand Medina.

In college, Catherine fed her passion for the guitar by joining the UP Guitar Orchestra, with whom she has performed in numerous concerts including the 1st and 2ndPhilippine International Guitar Festival, the 2011 Asia International Guitar Festival in Bangkok, Thailand and the World Classical Guitar Music Festival in Nakhon Ratchasim, Thailand.

When Catherine Belle is not holding a guitar, she is the vocalist for Spiral Eli and for SoulPage. In her spare time, she infuses her business savvy and music industry encounters to prepare for her future role as a prominent talent manager/music critic/record label executive.

CRISTINA H. LOZANO

Cristina Hontiveros Lozano is an architect who plays the guitar as a hobby. She has been playing since she was 13 years old, influenced by her father who is the guitarist/musician Rudy Lozano. She started learning the classical guitar in 2008 with Luthier Armando Derecho as her teacher and joined The Guitar Friends in 2010.

MARGA ABEJO

Marga Abejo is a Music Education major (concentration in guitar) from the UP College of Music. She has been a member of UPGO for a year. She had guitar lessons under Barney Fojas, Joe Valdez, and Lester Demetillo. Before joining the guitar orchestra, she immersed herself in different extra-curricular activities. She was a former member and officer in the UP Varsity Swim Team. She is also part of the Delta Lambda Sigma Sorority, which exposed her to many socio-civic activities. She is currently on her graduating year and is savoring the last moments in UP.

JENNY DE VERA

Jenny de Vera began her love affair with the guitar at age 12 and by the age of 15 had progressed to the classical guitar. Under the auspices of Professor Lester Demetillo, Jenny became the first female Bachelor of Music Major in Guitar graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Music. She was a soloist for the UP Guitar Orchestra and one of her most memorable performances include her Philippine Premiere of Handel’s Harp Concerto in A major for Guitar and Guitar Orchestra. She has performed all over the Philippines and Thailand. She had masterclasses with Flavio Cucchi, Tomonori Arai, Steve Lin and Angelo Favis. At present, she is teaching at the UP College of Music Extension Program and the Miriam College Center for Applied Music.

PROGRAM

Danza del Sur - Hansjoachim Kaps (Guitar Trio)

Asturias - Isaac Albeniz (Marga Abejo)

Sons de Carrilhoes - Joao Pernambuco (Cristina H. Lozano)

Jota Aragonaise - Georges Bizet (Guitar Trio)

Bolero - Julian Arcas (Jenny de Vera)

Cancion del Fuego Fatuo - Manuel de Falla (Jenny de Vera)

Cancion - Carlos Rafael Rivera (Jenny de Vera)

Lullaby - Andrew York (Catherine Belle)

Thusslegarth - Stephen Funk Pearson (Catherine Belle)

Rondo from Duo in G - Ferdinando Carulli (Guitar Duet)

Concerto para 3 guitarras - Antonio Vivaldi (Guitar Trio)

Leron leron Sinta - Filipino Traditional (Guitar Quartet)

Guitar Trio - Jenny de Vera, Catherine Belle and Marga Abejo

Guitar Duet - Jenny de Vera and Cristina H. Lozano

Guitar Quartet - Jenny de Vera, Cristina H. Lozano, Catherine Belle and Marga Abejo

Oil goes a tumbling

2008-07-24T03:18:00.004+08:00

My fears are being confirmed. Way back in February, I thought that speculators were hyping up oil as a financial instrument and were instrumental in the past and coming price spikes. In that period, vodoo economists such as CNN's financial editor were saying speculation had nothing to do with the prices. True, the general upward trend had to have some basis in fundamentals (supply and demand), but the spikes had more to do with hype than with anything else. Now oil prices are going down and so is the confidence of investors in alternative energy (but more on this later).

If you recall, when Todd Benjamin was defending the speculators, each fear of a supply disruption was hyped up to ridiculous proportions but there was never ever any mention of what the supply curve looked like (much less the long-run supply curve). So now I'm happy that the 'long' speculators are getting burned. But I worry about the alternative energy investors.

Davao War Diary

2008-07-13T01:58:00.004+08:00

Concerto (Davao War Diary) is simple storytelling of a family’s travails just before the end of the Second World War in Davao City, which had a significant Japanese migrant population prior to its outbreak.

Ninety five percent of Filipinos today were born after the end of that war (in 1945), and thus most of us know of the Japanese occupation and eventual American reoccupation only from accounts of grandparents and great grandparents and from whatever coverage was devoted to the subject in high school and college. The Japanese were the villains who committed all sorts of atrocities and the Americans were the so-called liberators.

But the war wasn’t that simple, especially for the family depicted in the film. Who was friend? Who was foe? In the wide gray area between collaboration and resistance lay the day-to-day prerogatives of survival. Yet, the struggle for survival was also a fight for humanity and humaneness, shown in part by the subjects and retreating occupiers’ love for music.

It is said that history is often written or told by the victors. But one of the most rewarding experiences in the production was the active participation of the young Japanese cast (all Philippine residents) in reviewing history through contemporary circumstances.

This war drama, inspired and based on true incidents in the director’s family, is a challenge for independent (read low-budget) film-making, and it is to the credit of Paul Morales’s skills that we will not be a disappointed audience.

In her introduction to Diary of A War which she edited and on which the film is partly based, Virginia Yap Morales reveals her fears over the continuing conflict in Mindanao. To most Filipinos, war simply can’t be a distant memory.

Concerto is an entry to the ongoing Cinemalaya Film Festival (CCP, July 11-20).

Disclosure: Paul is a good friend.

Rushing to conclusions on power reforms

2008-07-04T02:18:00.003+08:00

Here's an example of how foreign observers get some things fundamentally wrong on the Philippines. Greg Rushford's piece on the Philippine power sector was published last week in the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal. While many of his observations---especially about the petulance and childishness of the Philippine Senate were correct---he was wrong on one important conclusion. He mistakenly thought that amending the power sector reform law to make open access possible even with a lower threshold for NPC assets privatization (50% instead of the 70% in the current law) meant the country was backtracking on privatization. I wonder how he arrived at the conclusion. As long-time observer and participant of and in the power sector, I find his recklessness appalling.

Undercover in Poipet

2008-02-15T13:36:00.002+08:00

What could an old man like me be doing in a karaoke room with two young Khmer men and four young Khmer women in their early to late 20's? Helping a friend by going under cover. My mission: to see if the karaoke ladies are actually technically sex workers or more bluntly, prostitutes, by posing as a 'regular' costumer, whatever that means. The friend is doing research on the effects of 'empowerment' on sexual behavior, specifically the reduction of risk in contracting HIV.
Where's Poipet? It's more than 400 kilometers west northwest of Phnom Penh and is the border town with Aranyathrapet on the Thai side and used to be a base of the Khmer Rouge that mined it before retreating. It is bustling with economic activity, linked in part to cross-border trade and the influx of tourists from prosperous Thailand, who flock to a special entertainment zone of hotel-casinos, modest duty-free shops, and restaurants. The workers in the zones are Khmers and the patrons are generally Thai, and ordinary Khmers are not allowed in.
Was the mission a flimsy excuse for voyeurism and worse? Not exactly, but you be the judge. My friend's study requires a sample of sex workers---direct and indirect---who have and haven't benefitted from anti-HIV programs. The problem is with the so-called indirect sex workers because one can never be sure that there may indeed be legitimate karaoke joints as there are in Manila. And very likely, these joints occupy a gray area. In addition, the friend was trying to determine how many of the 'peer leaders'---sex workers recruited into an anti-HIV program in the past, remained in the area. But that was the job of her assistant.
Lulled into a reverie and thinking how the Khmer woman in the music video looked like former Philippine tourism secretary Gemma Cruz, cavorting with a fully clothed old-fashioned Khmer whose idea of romance was staring into a woman's eyes and occasionally touching her face while strolling in the paddies, I suddenly felt the 25-year-old girl squeezing my left thigh and stroking the hair on the lower leg. I didn't really freeze, but then she started massaging my head and back and arms and telling the research assistant my legs were comparable in size to her arms, with a laugh. I was all skin and bones, she said, and the fact that the assistant tried to soothe my ego by telling me repeatedly that I had a resemblance to Manny Pacquiao didn't help my ego one bit. Then she leaned to rest her head on my left shoulder.
In the meantime, Phine the tall and dashing driver was James bonding with the 22-year-old and singing a love song. His phone rang and when he came back inside his demeanor had become somber. (It was only the morning after that I learned his wife had been taken to hospital for labor. She gave birth to their first child, a girl, at six in the morning.)
How not to break my cover? I said I had to go out for a cigaret and didn't want to inflict any secondary smoke on anyone. But the prettiest, the 29-year-old went out to insist that I should just smoke inside. At this point I felt I was already between a rock and a soft place, between being called a snob or a prude, for I am neither. Perhaps better to be thought of as gay?
The ladies were disappointed when we left shortly after ten, for we obviously weren't the type of customers they are accustomed to.
Mission accomplished. And one inescapable conclusion is that the sex workers here have much more dignity than the political prostitutes in the Philippines. Since she has not hacked being an economist and president, perhaps Gloria Macapagal Arroyo should consider a change in career as a karaoke girl in Poipet, but only after serving her time in jail.

The Trial of Nuon Chea (Khmer Rouge 2)

2008-02-12T20:40:00.000+08:00

Last Monday, February 4, was the first public pre-trial hearing on the bail petition of Nuon Chea, the administrator of Tuol Sleng, where thousands were tortured and murdered systematically during the rule of the Khmer Rouge in 'Democratic Kampuchea' from April 1975 to January 1979.

Because one of the foreign lawyers (both Dutch) of Chea was not sworn in by the Cambodia Bar Association (and thus could not practice in the country), and the other allegedly could not book a flight from the Netherlands owing to 'short notice,' his local lawyer, and even Chea himself, pleaded with the pre-trial chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)---established especially for the leaders of the Khmer Rouge---for a continuance of the proceedings. Just so his rights would not be violated---the rules of the ECCC entitle the accused to at least one local and one foreign lawyer--- the pre-trial chamber granted the request, to the dismay and consternation of Cambodians and foreign observers who had flown in just to witness the start of the proceedings.

I myself was extremely disappointed, but if the move really was in respect of the rights of the accused, that was okay. I was the third person to arrive at the Central Rail Station in Phnom Penh, where, I had been told, a bus would ferry foreign and local observers to the ECCC buildings on National Road 4 about 30 kilometers away, between 7 and 7:30. The bus arrived past 8:30 a.m. but the trip was without incident.

To my knowledge, I was the only Filipino observer there. After getting my security pass, and having my electronic belongings and other banned items receipted (no cameras, phones, cigarets), and passing the metal detectors, I was stopped by the sentry who frisked me. He was looking at and pointed to my thighs. I wished that he had merely wanted to compliment me on my skinny legs, but no, he shouted “shorts!” and thereupon the foreign sentry who had already waved me in earlier suddenly said I should show some respect for the courts. I had asked members of foreign human rights organizations back at the rail station whether shorts were allowed and they replied sure, they knew of no dress code. After concluding that it was pointless to argue any further, I got my belongings back and hopped on a motodup to buy a pair of pants at the nearest public market. National Road 4 is notorious for its lawless driving and my situation was aggravated by a driver who neither spoke nor understood English. He was driving fast and furious merrily back toward Phnom Penh and I had to tap both his shoulders rather violently so he would stop. It was only after I had succeeded with sign language and other gesticulation that I wanted to buy a pair of pants at the local public market that I allowed him go forward again. It was just my luck that the market indeed had a dry goods section with men's pants (the pair I bought presumably fake for $8---I am retarded about such things---I put on shielded by a towel in front of the sales girl). Had I not found a suitable pants, it would not have been beyond me to buy a palda instead, and with hair down, insisted on being allowed in as a dignified cross-dresser, to skirt the issue altogether. So I made it back to the courts just a few minutes after the proceedings had started.

During the break when the judges had retreated to chambers to deliberate on Chea's plea, I had the chance to exchange some words with Helen Jarvis, with whom I had been acquainted way back in 2002 and now head of ECCC public affairs---on the comic affair. She was friendly but unsympathetic. “Are shorts allowed in Philippine courts?”, she asked. Well, I thought, I may not be an anarchist but I am not one for rituals and the visible signs of respect for institutions and individuals, and if they weren't, then they should be. Helen also joked about by pro-cannabis shirt and wondered why the guards allowed that to pass, In addition, I was wearing strapless leather slippers. Is it too much to ask for some respect for my irreverence? As far as I'm concerned, all respect for institutions and official positions need to be earned and should not be accorded automatically.

Move on? I've no objections

2008-02-10T20:37:00.000+08:00

Phnom Penh---Saturday night some Filipinos here met to discuss recent events in the Philippines, especially the 'Lozada Affair'. After lunch today, they came out with the following statement for circulation and signatures among like-minded Filipinos here:

Move On and Move Out!
An Urgent Request to the Arroyo Administration
in Light of the Jun Lozada Abduction and the
continuing coverup of the ZTE-NBN and other scandals and abuses:

The abduction last week of Jun Lozada, resigned president of the Philippine Forest Corporation, to prevent him from testifying on the aborted $329 M ZTE-NBN contract before the Philippine Senate, could be just one more episode indicating the administration’s overriding principle of governance: criminal self-aggrandizement complexed with an almost unlimited capacity for self-preservation.

But it is not. In fact, the abduction and the subsequent coverup, the lie after lie after lie, big and small, the use of the bureaucracy, the national security apparatus, and the abuse of the state’s monopoly of force, to prevent the truth from coming out, represent by far the most painful insult to the people because of the brazenness and silliness of the acts, and the assumption by Malacanang that it can continue to bribe and spin and intimidate and to conduct business as usual despite the very public and very obvious unraveling of its conspiracies.

In the coming days, we anticipate a worsening of the crisis of confidence and legitimacy of the administration. As its lies grow bolder, it will become more and more difficult to sustain its aura of invincibility.

We, members of the Filipino Community in Cambodia---eking out an honest and decent living, and concerned about the standing of the country in the international community---alarmed, ashamed, and disgusted by the recent events, renew our call to Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her top officials, civilian, police and military, to resign en masse to pave the way for new and clean snap elections and a smooth transition, and to prevent any new power grab by adventurist undemocratic elements.

We do not and cannot buy the argument or the illusion that only Mrs. Arroyo can propel the country’s economy forward. But even if that were true, we do not believe in a tradeoff between economic prosperity and social justice and human rights.

We say it is not too early for change. We should not wait for the 2010 elections. It is also not too late for Mrs. Arroyo and company to rediscover a modicum of decency and civility. She should not wait to be handcuffed in 2010; she can always turn herself and her husband in at the police outpost closest to the Palace. After all, as Joseph Estrada has shown, there is life after the presidency and there is life after prison.

Mrs. Arroyo, it is time to move on and to move out, so the country can finally move forward!

Pinoys in Cambodia
Phnom Penh, February 10, 2008

Pol Pot's ghost

2008-02-02T18:38:00.000+08:00

t had been a tiring day in August sixteen years ago and I wanted to retire early. I could have but for a knock on the door before eleven.

It was the comrade from Bangkok next door. "I'm so Thai, damn." "I'm just so Thai," I heard again. So you are. You really really are, I should have said. The third time, I was awake enough to get the sense of his weariness from our day's journeys. So I had to open a few badly brewed bottles of Vietnamese beer.

It is difficult to recount all the details. But I remember that that day, we had been to Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, not so far from the border with Thailand. One of the world's wonders was being preserved and restored by Indian experts paid by Unesco even while it was under threat from mortar attacks from the Khmer Rouge. It was defended by youths, one of whom, not more than thirteen in my reckoning, had an RPG slung on his shoulder, had asked me for a cigaret. I even lit it up for him, perhaps because he was nursing an AK-47 with both hands besides.

Earlier, we had visited a farm where, our hosts claimed, the Khmer Rouge had tortured the more 'dangerous' threats to its rule. After extracting confessions, the so-called liberators of that Indochinese land would throw their captives into the pits filled with hungry crocodiles.

In Phnom Penh for two days, we visited the many torture chambers and mass graves. Pits filled with bones from which it was difficult to assemble even just a few skeletons.

I was a delegate to a 'solidarity' conference organized by a part of the international Left to lend or shore up legitimacy to the government of Heng Samrin, installed with the aid of the Vietnamese, in December 1979. At the time, the United States, with the active support of China, had succeeded in isolating the new government. But there were of course the independent-minded who thought that ideology and geo-politics should never get in the way of one's humanity.

There were various relief and project missions by the Swedish---I remember echoes of ABBA at the airport; Japanese delegations; Indian scientists. There was, too, Julie Andrews bringing goods for the children at an orphanage; we missed her by a few minutes. There was even a Boholana working for a religious mission---World Vision---who arranged for a meeting with me.

I cannot tell you now how I ever got there. Or how the Thai comrade managed to elude authorities in his country, who was not only harboring but also actively supporting the deadly triumvitate of Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, and Pol Pot.

The story of the Khmer Rouge is not really unfamiliar in this century, full of mad men who wanted to do good to their fellows, even kind men who wanted some crude egalitarianism to reign forever. If not by transporting all of them to the countryside, by evening out opportunities for many six feet under.

At that time, the leftist sect that I belonged to, on the other side of the Sino-Soviet divide, had distanced itself from the nightmare of Pol Pot's dreams. But there are still people who have not even explained their support for that "revolutionary project" up to now.

As I write this, I am no longer even with the sect I was with. I was "expelled" after I had resigned more than seven years ago; and for that I have no regrets. I now know that the road to hell can look so idyllic, especially if one has ideological blinders on.

My Thai comrade, then in his fifties and writing for a Bangkok paper, could not sleep. He had been told by a room boy he was sleeping in the room Pol Pot used to occupy. The next morning, after confirming the allegation, I too, suddenly felt so Thai. Haunted by the man's ghost way before his death, we just couldn't sleep.

(The essay above was published in the Manila Times in May 1998 (when Malou Mangahas was chief editor, I'm back in Cambodia for the third time partly to update myself on efforts to take the remnants of the Khmer Rouge to account. I was here in 2002, 20 years after the first visit, when the land was still recovering from the ravages of Pol Pot.)

science and politics 1: Nobel physicist David Jonathan Gross

2008-01-29T19:45:00.000+08:00

During the holidays in January, I had the chance to exchange a few words with Nobel physicist David Jonathan Gross during his visit to Cebu. One of his more striking observations was that the lifestyles in the West (the so-called developed world) were not sustainable in the light of the growing evidence that human activity is in the main responsible for global warming of recent years.
But what struck me more was his observation that politics often trumps science but that the major problems of the world could not but be solved through politics (broadly defined), ultimately.
The visit was not covered well in the press, national or 'provincial'. That's why I'm publishing here my feature which was published in Cebu Daily News Jan. 21.

Hard Science not enough to solve mankind's contemporary problems---Nobel physicist

In a country where hard science is usually trumped by political 'science', the lecture by David J. Gross, one of the Nobel laureates for physics in 2004, on “The Lessons of Science” at the University of San Carlos College of Architecture and Fine Arts (CAFA) Jan. 11 was not only appropriate but serendipitously helpful. The lecture was part of a series under the auspices of the “Bridges---Dialogues Toward a Culture of Peace” program of the Vienna-based International Peace Foundation headed by Dr. Uwe Morawetz.

We say appropriate and helpful because protagonists in two major developments in Cebu and environs--- the offshore oil exploration in the Tañon Strait, and the proposed Cebu trans-axial highway--- are resorting to 'scientific' arguments to buttress their positions. At the national level, a debate is raging over the net environmental impacts of the widespread production and use of biofuels, and Filipinos are finding it difficult to sift through the so-called evidence and claims in regard to the Glorietta blast in October last year. In all these cases, preconceptions and political biases get in the way of objective evaluation of phenomena and the indentification of cause and effect.

But Dr. Gross himself accepts the limits of hard science and the need for politics in addressing mankind's most challenging contemporary problems, among them widespread hunger and the potentially catastrophic consequences of human-induced global warming. Far from being the stereotypical 'mad scientist' people tend to associate with genius, the well-groomed physicist looked more like the John Lithgow character in Third Rock from the Sun, often incredulous at the practices and beliefs of earthlings. The global character of these problems, he said, required internationalism and effective global government envisioned by Albert Einstein.

The Lessons of Science

The announced title of the lecture was “The Coming Revolutions in Fundamental Physics” but Dr. Gross thought that the time allotted would not do the subject justice. Also, he was unsure about the nature and interests of the audience. The core of the scientific method, 'discovered' about the same time USC was established over 400 years ago, according to Dr. Gross, is observation and experiment, and the only authority scientific ideas 'bow' to is agreement with nature itself, and not to “political power nor religious faith.” “All theories are provisional...(and are refined by continuing verification guaranteed) by 'making findings available to all.' The implications of the scientific method go beyond scientific research because a healthy scientific culture requires an open society. Science promotes tolerance and democracy because in scientific inquiry, all are considered equal, he said.

In his one-hour lecture, Dr. Gross briefly traced the development of science and emphasized how young its branches are: physics, 400 years; astrophysics/cosmology, 100; biology, 150.

Perils, predictions, and guarded optimism

The standing arsenals of nuclear weapons with the potential to end all life on earth within hours constitutes a continuing scandal, Dr. Gross said in response to a question on nuclear proliferation posed by this writer during a press conference shortly before the lecture. Checking the spread of nuclear weapons remained difficult if the superpowers held on to their stockpiles which, he said, were utterly useless. The physicist reiterated the nuclear threat in his lecture, where he warned that science can and has been used for both good and bad.

But the overwhelming theme of the lecture, however, was optimism over the future of mankind. Dr. Gross boldly predicted that in the next 100 to 1000 years, the human lifespan---which has doubled in the last two centuries--- would be ten times what it is now and that human life would spread to other areas in the universe. Closer to the present, he said, the behavioral sciences would achieve the status of 'real science' in the next 50-100 years.

It takes a Nobel-class physicist to re-inspire awe in what is already well accepted in the scientific community: that humans are puny creatures in one planet revolving around a sun which is one among a 100 billion in our galaxy, which is among 100 billion galaxies in the universe that is said to have started with the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. What was behind the Big Bang? When and how did time begin? Dr. Gross would not hazard a guess as to when these questions would be answered. Science, after all, continues to leave us with “informed, intelligent ignorance,” “We' ve learned that all of our concepts are provisional...subject to continuing questioning, challenging...and improvement.”

A feather for San Carlos

Dr. Gross, together with David Politzer and Frank Wilczek, received the Nobel for Physics for his theory on the strong force, the nuclear force that binds quarks, the smallest buildiing blocks of matter, and that binds the nucleus of the atom. He was conferred the San Carlos Borromeo Award by Fr. Roderick Salazar in behalf of the University.

The 400 year-old USC was one of two venues outside Metro Manila (the other was Ateneo de Davao) chosen by the International Peace Foundation for its continuing Bridges lectures,which promotes international understanding, among others, through visits by Nobel laureates that share its vision. Prior to the recent series in the Philippines, all of the lectures were held in Thailand. When USC president Fr. Roderick Salazar was first contacted by Dr. Morawetz, elation readily gave way to organization. It was Fr. Rod who chose Dr. Gross from the foundation's roster. It is not well known that science, physics and chemistry in particular, is a flagship program of USC. The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) has in fact recognized USC as a center of excellence in chemistry. Fr. Rod told me that preparations for the lecture begun early last year and that the university was asked to shoulder the business class tickets of Dr. Gross and company. The exposure of Cebu academia to Nobel-class high theory, and not just the prestige for USC, was well worth the expense, Fr. Rod said.

Two internationally recognized Filipino physicists, Christopher C. Bernido and Maria Victoria C. Bernido of the Research Center for Theoretical Physics at the Central Visayan Institute Foundation in Jagna, Bohol were on hand for the lecture. Christopher introduced the guest speaker while Marivic moderated the open forum. The CVIF is known for putting the Philippines on the world map in theoretical physics and has brought a number of Nobel physicists to the Center without fanfare.

The Bridges 2008 lecture series resumes in the Philippines February 4-8 with Prof. Finn Erling Kydland, Nobel economics laureate 2004, slated to discuss “Peace and economic development in the age of globalization” February 8 at the same venue in USC.

(Our thanks to N-ding Mission of the USC Library System for providing us with dvd's of the lecture and open forum. As USC apparently has no plans of transcribing the proceedings, I will take the trouble of doing that myself. The transcripts wil be made available here in due time).

Customer Care

2008-01-20T00:19:00.000+08:00

I'm starting the year with a new blog on customer care, dedicated to readers who are tired of the crap from business, government, and even so-called non-government and non-profit organizations. More than ten years ago, I told Ceres Doyo that the Philippines lacked a genuine consumer rights movement, but the discussion did not lead to anything tangible. The new blog is my contribution to address the problem.

Local 'psychics' accept challenge of skeptical subversive

2007-12-19T01:17:00.000+08:00

In a post on November 2, we discussed our doubts on the remote-sensing and spoon bending tricks played by members of the local Psychic Entertainment Network on ANC. The PEN has invited us to witness their tricks under 'laboratory' conditions or conditions we ourselves will specify so as to preclude any foolishness. Nomer Lasala of PEN has told me that Jaime Licauco will also be invited to vet what should be a public demonstration. We're meeting on Thursday and we'll keep you updated.

Bali high, Bali low: engaging the Rizalist on global warming and prematurely melting snow

2007-12-16T21:14:00.000+08:00

Is global warming the new Y2k bug without a deadline? Dean Jorge Bocobo asks. His post on climate change has the promise of reason, but quickly degenerates into a polemic against environmentalism, the media, politics, and Al Gore.

First, we agree with Dean that on any issue, a fair amount of skepticism is always healthy. But skepticism must be followed by due diligence, that is to say, an articulation of the reasons for skepticism. Otherwise it is simply contrarianism and obscurantism.
We also are, like him, uncomfortable with science by consensus, and this discomfort has support in the history and the philosophy of science itself. Listening to the chair of the IPCC with Al Gore with CNN's Jonathan Mann made me squirm in my seat a little. Pachi sounded like a bureaucrat/propagandist who could tolerate a little dramatization of 'facts' for the purpose of 'raising consciousness.'
Lastly, we think that any scientific assertion has to have a null hypothesis falsifiable under Karl Popper's definition.

Dean proceeds to ask:

But is the price of further human progress the end of the world? Have we made war on the Earth itself, as Al Gore suggests and are locked in a relationship of Mutually Assured Destruction? Al Gore does not say this at all and never has.
Can a tax save the earth from the laws of economics and thermodynamics, as well as close the Gap between the Rich and the Poor? Do the rich nations of the world owe pollution reparations to the poor nations, and do poor nations have an equal right to pollute the atmosphere, at least for a while until they have both sinned the same amount against Gaia? In fact, for a tax to be effective, it has to be designed with the use of economic theory, and theory does suggest that taxes can be used judiciously to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
Is green the new yellow journalism? Is global warming the new Y2K Bug without a deadline? Well, media is always susceptible to yellow, regardless of the issue, and it is up to critical bloggers like Dean to help enlighten us.

Dean then calls our attention to the letter of Freeman Dyson and others "urging adaptation instead of futile attempts to 'fight' climate change with sin taxes." Adaptation is one of the options for mitigating global warming impacts and should always be on the menu, and sin taxes to punish polluters is an entirely different issue.

Economic theory suggests that markets cannot be relied on to bring the most efficient outcome in the presence of so-called 'externalities,' to which the phenomenon of air pollution belongs. If an individual does not consider the effect of his or her action on others, how can that bring efficiency indeed? The post also revisits the problem of the commons first elucidated formally by G. Hardin. But then Dean draws the wrong conclusion:

"An important conclusion about problems involving public commons is that there is no "technical solution" to the basic problem. It's like the game of tic-tac-toe. There is no way to win once all players become familiar with the game. Keeping the "commons" publicly accessible inexorably leads to the destruction of the commons. The only solution is to turn such commons into private property. I don't know how we do that to the global commons."

In fact, economists since Hardin have proposed many effective solutions to the 'commons' problem and a rich theoretical and practical literature has blossomed since then, from where political acts followed. To cite a few:

Particulate matter pollution, addressed with economic measures guided by technology. In the Philippines, we took lead out of and reduced aromatics in gasoline, reduced sulfur in diesel, enforced emission standards on vehicles and factories.
Water and solid waste pollution, similar measures.

" I am also not sure yet how Gore's ideas fit into this framework. If the new CO2 tax he is proposing is likened to a sin tax, we only have to look at the continued prevalence of gambling, drinking and smoking to wonder if this is the right way to go. On the other hand, if it spurs the development of new technologies that don't have the problem of discharging CO2 into the atmosphere, could a case not be made for such taxes being beneficial?"

Sin taxes are not meant to eliminate bad behavior, bad to reduce incidence. The reason sin taxes are superior to income taxes is simple: the latter punishes effort, the former discourages 'sin.' In fact, the argument is independent of how the proceeds are eventually spent, but if these are spent for the 'public good,' so much the better.

Notes:
I didn't go to Bali thinking I had better use of my time. But the conference did redound to some good.
I have no pretensions of being an 'environmentalist,' but with my white hair and limited experience, I have successfully passed myself off as an 'environmental and energy economist' and have contributed to some national legislation.
In the summer of 1993. I attended an environmental economics policy course in Harvard at a time when climate science still had a lot of room for doubt. The call at that time was for no-regrets policies, which meant addressing problems with clearer impacts but had the side effect of reducing GHG emissions. Since then, there has been sizable progress in the theory. But that does not mean skepticism is no longer warranted.
On the eve of New Year's eve 2000, I missed my train to Grand Rapids from Chicago and had to pay an extraordinary amount for an ordinary room in the windy city.
In a future post, I will try to discuss the political economy of the issue.

Why a win-win outcome is unlikely: Sumilao (3)

2007-12-14T22:37:00.000+08:00

Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has agreed to meet with the Sumilao farmers on Monday, after the agrarian reform secretary issued his earth-shaking decision: status quo! What's on Mrs. Arroyo's mind? I asked the spouse of a cabinet secretary. Nothing really. She just wants to listen, or to appear to listen. What should we advise the farmers? Go to Malacanang and have merienda, it is their right, after all that's supposed to be the hall of the people.

But is a win-win outcome possible? Yes, but highly improbable. Based on the legal briefs I've studied, the land rightly belongs to the farmers. If San Miguel Foods claims that it can put the land to much better use, and for the benefit of not just the Mapalad farmers to boot, then it should first make a decent proposal to compensate the farmers for the land, to include the foregone income for the past 10 years or so. Instead, it has evidently chosen the tack of divide and rule, dangling the prospect of income for the non-claimant farmers in Sumilao, after probably having bribed the governor and father of this dubious character in the senate, who is full of crap about biofuels blah blah blah and advocating without understanding, and Sumilao town officials. This much was evident to me when the San Miguel Foods cabal, including Jess Arranza of the Federation of Philippine Industries appeared in Korina Sanchez's show last Wednesday. She was apparently not well-prepared and did not ask the right questions of the farmers who were on the show earlier.
I'm not an advocate of national food security because I believe millions more Filipino consumers deserve the best prices for staple and other food. Agrarian reform is a means for asset redistribution and not to tie farmers to the land forever. What they want to do with the land is up to them. The greater and more realistic aspiration is income stability, security, and mobility. I am not sentimental about land, but if the farmers are, that is their right.

Notes:

I don't really know what the liability of Norberto Quisumbing Jr., whom I worked for in the 1980's, is. I hear from Cebu that he's busy trying to leave a legacy, and has just sued a columnist for The Philippine Star.
After having been barred from entering the compound to deliver their position paper last Monday, the farmers relented and had it received at the gate. Such law-abiding and humble citizens in contrast to the officials of San Miguel Foods. Yesterday, all they could do was stage a sit-down strike and noise barrage against the status quo order, which is not a good idea; they'd only ruin their eardrums and get 'kubal' on their 'lubot.' A better idea is to stalk Nasser Pangandaman and invade the privacy of his home.
In my visits to the Soviet Union and the East Bloc in the 1980's petty or small-holder farmers were looked down on with great suspicion as lacking in revolutionary spirit in contrast to the real proletariat. I have since then taken a more liberal view.
I've got nothing against Korina Sanchez. In fact, I really like her program, especially when she's absent and Pia Hontiveros or Twink Macaraig or Pinky Webb sub for her.

DAR's gift to the Sumilao farmers on Human Rights Day (2)

2007-12-11T23:54:00.000+08:00

The Department of Agrarian Reform celebrated Human Rights Day by betraying the human rights of the very farmers whose existence is its very reason for being. As the farmers prepared to go up to the offices of the DAR secretary, they were barred from entering the compound by about eight security guards, on orders of the secretary himself. . Minutes later police from Camp Karingal arrived to keep the peace, very likely the peace of mind of San Miguel Foods’ Danding Cojuangco and Ramon Ang, whose well-paid lawyers pleaded ignorance about the laws of the land they have so obviously violated. Where were the born-again stars in national politics?

How do I know all these? Simple, I was with the farmers from two in the afternoon up to almost eight in the evening. And why did I feel obliged to lend my support in body and not just mind? Never mind, but you can read the previous entry in this blog. I will not go into the chronology on the issue. If you are concerned, there’s enough material on the web. Among those are the essays of Winnie Monsod, who discussed the latest findings of Arsenio Balisacan, my professor almost 20 years ago in agricultural economics; and Joaquin Bernas, as my atheism does not bar me from admiring Jesuit scholarship. Here, I would rather discuss what has not been reported in the mainstream media, including the Philippine Daily Inquirer and ABS-CBN.

Earlier in the afternoon, the farmers and their leaders inside their talipapa camp just outside the gates of the DAR discussed the position paper the DAR secretary had asked them to submit by the end of Monday. They felt they really didn’t have to anymore as their positions and petitions were already known not only to the guards of DAR but also to the lizard population on the ceiling of Nasser Pangandaman’s well-appointed office. (Much as I would like to sympathize with Pangandaman who has been busy counting the white hair in his nose and daydreaming about Christmas lechon, he makes me want to go vegetarian). But they did, like lowly farmers who obey the laws of the land. Or wanted to. The rule of law? Whose law and whose rules?

At around five, the guards suddenly padlocked and chained the gates. Then a receiving clerk appeared and said she was authorized to accept the position paper.

“Why don’t you relocate your office to the gates then?” the farmers asked. The clerk said those were her orders.

“Has San Miguel submitted its position paper?” lawyer Marlon Manuel asked the clerk. She didn’t know or would not say.

“Where is the secretary?” A few minutes later a young man who claimed he was from the secretariat explained to ‘Kaka,’ a coordinator for the farmers, “We don’t want any trouble.” “And neither do we,” Kaka said.

“Who gave the order to lock the gates?” I asked the guards. “We don’t know,” they replied.

After more than an hour, the farmers decided to cool off and celebrate mass with priests and nuns from Mindanao. At the risk of being excommunicated from my own congregation, I stayed. When I left before eight, it wasn’t clear whether the Sumilao farmers would be home for Christmas.

Notes:

· I was impressed by niece Charo Logarta who interviewed the leaders of the farmers in fluent Cebuano. Because I know my cousin (her dad) had left Cebu as a child, I assumed the daughter would know only English and Tagalog. I was wrong. Noel Cabangon came to sing a few songs in solidarity and I could not hold back tears. Someone let out air from the left rear tire of my car, but a farmer who also drives a jeepney in Bukidnon took care of it. There are Cebuano words which can’t be expressed in Tagalog or English: Pastilan! Intaon! Lechong baboy! Lecheng yawa! And that was exactly how I felt).

· It may very well be that the San Miguel plan would be better for the economy overall, but this a question of social justice and law and not of gross domestic product. It’s not jiust the economy stupid! It’s human rights and justice. If our national life were to be dominated by just economic efficiency, we would reopen the debate about democracy,dictatorship and development. Nyet! But more on this in the next post.

The rights of the Sumilao farmers (1)

2007-12-10T02:35:00.000+08:00

Among the strange coincidences in my long life are that in some way I had been associated with the anti-heroes in the struggle of the Sumilao farmers for land:

After graduation (chemical engineering) in 1980, I was appointed executive assistant to the president of the Norkis Group of Companies, a certain Norberto Quisumbing Jr.
About a year later, a certain Ruben Torres interviewed me for a job in the Ministry of Energy.
In 1993, I was asked to comment on proposals in the Senate to make agrarian reformed lands fungible by a senator considered close to Fidel Ramos.

Last Friday I paid the farmers camped in front of the Department of Agrarian Reform a brief visit. I hope to be able to converse with them again today. They have my undying support.

Get well Rene Saguisag

2007-11-08T11:17:00.001+08:00

The memory just can't be erased. Rene Saguisag was one of the finest symbols in the fight against dictatorship in the 80's. He saved many lives and suffered many indignities. Of one thing we can be sure: he remained true to the call to protect the down-trodden. Get well. Our condolences on the passing of Dulce.

By the way, we find this joke a bit too early in the telling to be funny.

Open those gates!

2007-11-08T10:24:00.000+08:00

Had I run and won for captain in my barangay, one of the first things I would have done was to open the gates. In the neighborhood I live in (Teachers Village, UP Village, Sikatuna Village) many roads, maintained and lit by taxpayers, have been expropriated by homeowners, including my favorite senator, Miriam Defensor Santiago, who have carved for themselves private enclaves on public property.
All one has to do is have a petition on grounds of barangay and national security approved by the village council. Howard Calleja, whose English and logic leave much to be desired, was just interviewed by Ricky Carandang on the subject. If it's private property then there's not much controversy, but the state still can exercise right of way. But public property! (hey we don't need more legal analysis; what happened to Dean Bocobo's show?).
Because of these gates, one has to go through long detours at night, contributing to unnecessarily to climate change.
I wonder why the so-called 'progressive' and 'left-wing' and 'pro-poor' groups don't bitch about this. Maybe their leaders live in these villages?

The captain of my barangay

six paradoxes and a little candor

2007-11-07T20:37:00.000+08:00

According to some pundits, the fabric of our society is about to be shred to pieces, even if there is no sign of any thread which can be woven to clothe us while we try to find a warm home henceforth.

Poverty and discontent are widespread, as is confusion. Let me cite some paradoxes:

The economy is improving while average family incomes are declining;
Average family incomes are declining even as more and more are going abroad to remit incomes to their families;
Remittances are increasing while real incomes are decreasing;
The people who go abroad are unhappy but continue to keep ties with the country;
They continue to keep ties with the country but their families remain unhappy;
They are unhappy but they continue to tolerate GMA.

More than ten years ago, a friend who spent more than six years in Moscow to study cinematography shared this joke with me:

The 6 paradoxes of socialism

there is no unemployment but nobody works;
nobody works but everybody gets paid;
everybody gets paid but the shops are empty;
the shops are empty but all get what they need;
they all get what they need but remain unhappy;
they remain unhappy but they all vote for the communist party.

The comparison might be a little stretched, but there are a few parallels. Let me be candid. I took part, as a communist then, in securing a scholarship for the friend above in Moscow. I have many unanswered questions about what may come next if we kick out Gloria. But I can't stand the lying that passes off as governance.

My goodness, Ambassador Kristie Kenney!

2007-11-07T07:45:00.000+08:00

If you were quoted properly in this Inquirer report US envoy backs 'accidental gas explosion' theory, you should immediately issue a clarification.

BAGUIO CITY -- The Philippine National Police’s “accidental gas explosion” theory has found another backer in US Ambassador Kristie Kenney, who said American experts had also concluded that the Oct. 19 blast at the Glorietta 2 mall in Makati City was “a tragic accident.”

Kenney, who was in Baguio for several engagements, said those saying otherwise should realize what a terror attack in Metro Manila would mean to the country as a whole.

“[An accident in the heart of a city] is never a good thing … but it is much better than having it [turn out] to be a bomb,” the ambassador said Tuesday.

“If there was a bombing at a shopping mall in the middle of Metro Manila, I want you to think about the kind of travel advisory America would have to put out and the devastating impact that would have on business,” she said, adding:

“I don’t think investors worry about an accident,” although the business community would “obviously want to know why it happened.”

You should realize by now that your unfortunate remarks just add fuel to the fertile minds of local conspiracy theorists who will now say you're in cahoots with authorities in a very complicated cover-up, because the logic of your statements is this: better think about the effects of a theory borne out by the facts, because they can be more devastating than the blast. Better to tailor the 'cause' to the 'desired effect' is what you seem to have said.

This is how the embassy release should read:

"We support all efforts to let the evidence speak for itself."

Publish this and you can gracefully shut up.

Snared in Pinky's Web

2007-11-05T11:26:00.000+08:00

Helplessly trapped in Pinky's web on ANC this morning was the arachnophobic Rep. Prospero Nograles, who confessed on the Malacanang meeting last Saturday. Naplantsa na ang gusot. All's well in the family known as the Mafia in Sicily.

Jose de Venecia to Gloria: There's nothing you can do to change my mind about you...
Gloria: Buang man ka dong. Pakusia kos imong bugan bi.

Pakistan and the Philippines: Notes on variations on a theme of oft-sung songs dictators sing

2007-11-04T23:38:00.001+08:00

After hearing the news on Pakistan yesterday, I asked an American colleague whether he could imagine GMA taking a leaf from the best-selling song hits of Musharaf. After a few glasses of wine we listed the following observations about dictators:

They are infected by a virus called messianism. They want to save us from ourselves.
That they claim they can do so because they know something we don't.
And when we ask for the info we don't know, they say we shouldn't even know what it is we don't know.
They have info we don't because we can't handle it soberly.
They can handle the info better because, they don't really want to rub it in, they are superior.
They are superior, because, not having been breast-fed, they steeled themselves drinking milk from the bottle.
But most of all, they were not born with sin, having been immaculately conceived inside the womb of their parents' cow.
Moo! You know nothing about national security!
They get invited to international conventions of solipsists and we don't.

All dictators spring from the old obscurantist tradition that they hear things from the creator reserved for true believers.

As oil prices poise to breach a hundred per barrel, energy secretary Angelo Reyes does the right thing: Nothing.

2007-11-04T06:21:00.000+08:00

Reyes is doing right by not announcing any populist moves. After all, at least as far as I'm concerned, the oil deregulation regime has been doing just fine. If we were in the late '80's or mid-90's, the scandal-ridden administration would already have been ousted by a coup by right-wing adventurists, who, in those times, timed their moves based on the movements of prices in the world oil market.

It is now close to a decade since we finally smashed the old illusion that oil price subsidies were pro-poor, perpetuated for a long time by the middle and upper class leaders of so-called 'people's organizations.' Note that at that time nominal prices were below 20 dollars per barrel. Now the high is about five times. But we don't hear of any outrageous manifestos that the increase is caused by the local ruling class in conspiracy with foreign capitalists, do we?

I have a list of measures the energy secretary might consider, but none of these will lower gasoline prices for the middle class. In the meantime, he should just stand his ground.

Here's a list of easy energy saving tips promoted by Iran's revered president.

Barangay elections and how Abalos is laughing now...

2007-11-04T06:14:00.000+08:00

If you're reading this, you're probably one of those who didn't bother to vote in the barangay elections. You can be excused because most in the middle class don't appreciate what village officials really do, aside from ensuring our homes and cars in our 'exclusive' villages, some situated on streets actually maintained and lit by the taxpayer at large.

But this new scandal at the Comelec cries out for attention.

To ANC's Marieton Pacheco: did they bend your rmind?

2007-11-02T04:32:00.000+08:00

Members of the Psychic Entertainment Network were featured in ANC yesterday. One remote-sensor, a mind reader, and a telekineticist. The mind-reader begged off from displaying his skills. Yes, the trio were careful to describe the abilities as 'skills' rather than as special powers.
The remote-sensor, with a metal blindfold, was able to pick milk from a set of five glasses; the other four contained water. In his commercial act, he said, the four would have contained acid.
The fork bender impressed Pacheco because after quick hand-wringing movements, he seemed to have bent the teeth and even the handle. Had I been there, I would have re-arranged the tests to eliminate loopholes in the demonstrations.
I would have placed a black hood on the remote-sensor and a plastic sheet in front of the bender.
Here's an informative video from Michael Shermer, my favorite skeptic, on spoonbending.

Here's my challenge to Marieton. If you claim you were not taken in for a good ride, let's invite the PEN at my expense and at a place and time of their choosing.
If they pass my tests, good. We can hire them to lecture to all the bloggers out there, brimming with self-importance, to hone their skills enough so that we can finally concentrate on GMA, and force her to leave Malacanang telekinetically. Deal?

Mukha Mukasey; implications for the Philippines

2007-11-02T02:57:00.000+08:00

The Democrats, because of attorney-general-nominee Mukasey's amiable face, are inclined to confirm him, except for this one fly in the ointment: Mukasey refuses to say whether waterboarding constitutes torture.
In a previous post, I pointed out that a senate Democrat mentioned the case of a US soldier who was prosecuted for using waterboarding on a Filipino insurgent. The effect of the method is to make the captive feel he is drowning. Now, if that is not torture, I don't know what is.
In his speech at the Heritage Foundation yesterday, George W. explained his tortured logic why Congress should just confirm the nominee immediately:

If the menu of methods in interrogation were to be published, suspected terrorists could adopt mitigation measures. How? By bringing scuba gear or snorkels all the time, during suicide missions, especially, I suppose. And Osama might send his trainees to explore the rich marine life in the Philippines in aid of proper certification as a torture-proof and dead terrorist. That makes sense and would be good for Philippine tourism. (How about this Ace Durano and GMA? Why don't you testify bravely against your idol?)
Mukasey has not been briefed on the method and could not possibly make a judgment. So brief him immediately then.
The whimpy Democrats, ever soft on national security, are just making political hay.
Finally leading to his pitch on the "war on terror", soi-disant, the US should employ all means to accomplish the ends of his foreign and phallic fallacy.

The New York Times explains Mukasey's refusal better: the administration does not want to open the door to prosecution of those who used the method before it came to public attention.
Does this debate have any implications for the Philippines? Are our definitions of torture rigorous? What are these?

Ruben Carranza Jr., formerly defense assistant secretary under Erap, recently reminded me that since EDSA 1, no one has been prosecuted successfully for torture. What a shame.

A new voice on ANC?

2007-11-02T01:42:00.000+08:00

At dinner last Sunday, my guest revealed that DJB_Rizalist would soon have a variety/talk show on ANC. That would be a fine addition to the channel's steadily improving menu. The guest, a mid-level Palace official, said there were just a few more hurdles before this new baby of Twink Macaraeg could be delivered by Caesarian bisection. Hail,hail! I will not reveal her identity on grounds of national security, on which Dean is notoriously obsessed.

The Dean, the most famous , opinionated, outspoken, and sometimes bullying 'neocon' blogger from the Philippines will now have access to a greater audience, or, should I say, we will now have greater access to his independent and sometimes courageously outrageous opinions.
The Philippine Onion's media critic, The Small and Medium, has the complete story. Tim Sebastian rejects ANC offer.

Donald Rumsfeld on Glorietta blast:it's WMD, stupid!

2007-11-01T23:57:00.000+08:00

This is my response to John Nery's recent blog Sleepless in Glorietta:

Dear John,

Skepticism is generally healthy, especially when it is solidly grounded. I have examined the premises of yours and find them wanting. To summarize, you “have a hard time believing” the conclusion because:

A few hours after the explosion, the PNP Chief himself aired the possibility that the blast was caused by a bomb. Yet, the well-written editorial you adverted to had this correct assertion: We recognize their testing of new theories as consistent with the emergence of new facts. Rather than being a basis for skepticism, this point tends to diminish it.
The visits by the PNP top brass to the various newsrooms were highly unusual. It could be that this is merely the way the new Chief does business, but as one can readily see from a comparison of the same-but-different front pages of the Inquirer and the Star the day after the visit, this kind of unusual attention stokes a journalist’s hard-earned skepticism. Couldn’t this have (when was this visit?) been just a media management attempt on such a disconcerting incident? I wonder why the Inquirer did not have the more appropriate headline “PNP officers visit PDI, eat own crow in front of editors!” consistent with your head “Palace fixes 190 congressmen” on the bribes scandal.
The police generals were quick to adopt an aw-shucks attitude when questioned about the technical details of the (new) theory they were proposing. But since then, police have also released a lot of information tending toward the gas blast theory, including the two reports featured in a special section of PDI with many photos of the basement which showed no signs of a bomb explosion.
My own sources tell me about other findings, other “facts” unaccounted for in the new theory. Unfortunately, I am not in a position to corroborate what they say. Why don’t you share these ‘facts’ for the careful consideration of your anxious readers? The Inquirer should also post the Australian report in its website.

The officials should be castigated for their rush to judgment early on. On the other hand we can’t be faulted for our rush to skepticism considering the current political atmosphere. But might we be faulted for a lingering, adamant, and unreasonable skepticism oblivious of the established facts already made available? A professional skeptic like me was instantly skeptical of the members of the Psychic Entertainment Network featured in ANC yesterday, but that is because of my appreciation of mainstream science. Would you happen to know of any arcane scientific findings which cast doubt on the gas blast theory? In other words, tell us what in the future needs to be established for you to find the theory easier to believe.

Before I forget let me attempt to dispose of the initial finding of RDX on one sample from the ground floor. In my earlier and long blogs on the subject, I raised the possibility that this was simply a false positive, owing to the limitations of the test itself. Because of the absence of reference to this in the reports of the foreign investigators, I take it that they were not able to replicate the result, and did not emphasize the fact out of professional courtesy to their local counterparts. I have read almost all the PDI articles on the blast but could not find any reference to any of your reporters pursuing this false positive angle.

Finally, your skepticism reminds me of ex-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s disengenuously original defensive remark: The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence in regard to the failure of investigators to find the slightest trace of WMD in Iraq post invasion.

Sincerely yours,

viking logarta

Dead but not buried

2007-11-01T02:14:00.001+08:00

If you're reading this coming in from the Halloween holidays, let me tell you this. If you thought Speaker Joe de Venecia will no longer be around, either you are dead, or just dead wrong. While you were away, the presidential security guard (PSG) was able to thwart another Palace coup. By the dead asking why she had not joined them as she had promised years ago.

The dead but not buried.

After all, the dead represent the largest constituency in Philipine politics.

Ermita's autumn in New York

2007-10-31T06:20:00.000+08:00

To the chagrin of some quarters who had hoped he would no longer show up in the Palace, chief of staff Eduardo Ermita returned to his post yesterday, but continued to fuel the ever louder murmurs of the supposed irreconcilable rift with DILG secretary Ronaldo "Goebbels" Puno. The issue was no longer the bribes scandal allegedly masterminded by the latter without a by your leave from the latter.

The issue this time was over who sent the list of nominees for the Comelec vacancies to the poll body. Irregular, Ermita said. Normal, Goebbels shot back in a fashion which somehow looks credible because he seems to really believe what he is saying. "Rift, what rift?' he asked in the manner of one who's savoring the upper hand but who self-consciously wants to look magnanimous.

Ermita was at least greeted by a congratulatory press release (warning:you might find the image offensive) on the success of his mission from the Palace, based on his own account. Ah but for the small kindnesses one gives oneself in times like these.

For it was Fall in New York, where he was dogged by the pesky human rights activists, and the aunt of Jonas Burgos, who confronted him in a forum, where he had
a civil but tense exchange with former PCGG commissioner and defense assistant secretary Ruben Carranza Jr., now a fellow at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ).

Ruben, a former student of UN special rapporteur Philip Alston, whose report on the Philippines was dismissed by Malacanang, says he can't believe Alston believed anything Ermita said at the meeting in the UN.

The Erap pardon in perspective

2007-10-29T18:37:00.000+08:00

The most erudite analysis of the Erap pardon I've read so far is this post from Leon, the boy blogger from outer space. He should know. His dad was in the thick of heroic efforts to recover Marcos ill-gotten wealth when there was still a hint of a glimmer of a small hope in the GMA administration.

Here, Leon gives the tongue to palace mouth Ignacio Bunye as the latter made the official announcement.

Glorietta 2: the gas blast was a palace conspiracy

2007-10-29T00:41:00.000+08:00

An independent team of undercover probers has published its report on the Glorietta incident.

Without question, the blast was a palace conspiracy to divert attention from the scandals facing the administration.

The spooks in their safe house

Erap in his own tortured words, days before the pardon

2007-10-28T00:40:00.000+08:00

The Philippine Onion has this exclusive on the state of Erap's mind in the days prior to his release. Who are you to judge him?

Pardon me, madam, but I can't pardon you

2007-10-25T17:57:00.001+08:00

Just less than thirty minutes ago, this man announced that former President Joseph Estrada, whose impeachment and subsequent extra-constitutional ouster I supported, was granted executive clemency, his civil and political rights restored.

While I feel sympathy and compassion for the former president, I believe the aspiration for justice and fairness for the population at large trumps these feelings.

I probably had sleepless nights after I 'stole' a few pesos from my mother's wallet to buy cigarets in childhood. My mother eventually pardoned me, but that was just between the two of us. I will never be charged and convicted of plunder, as I have no political ambitions, low or high, and thus will never have the chance to be pardoned.

Mrs. Arroyo, your purported act of compassion and reconciliation also shows how weak and cold you are, because the move cannot but be motivated by the preroragatives of political survival. If and when you are convicted of high crimes in the future, we will not pardon you.

Here's the transcript of the announcement, courtesy of but without permission from DJB:

Whereas this administration has a policy of releasing prisoners who have reached the age of 70,

Whereas Joseph Ejercito Estrada has been under detention for six and a half years,

Whereas Joseph Ejercito Estrada has publicly committed to no longer seek any elective position or public office,

In view hereof, and pursuant to the authority conferred upon me by the Constitution, I hereby grant executive clemency to Joseph Ejercito Estrada, convicted of plunder by the Sandiganbayan of plunder and imposed the penalty of reclusion perpetua.

He is hereby restored to his civil and political rights. The forfeitures imposed by the Sandiganbayan remain in force and in full, including all writs and processes issued by the Sandiganbayan in pursuance hereof, except for the bank accounts he owned before his tenure as President.

Upon acceptance of this pardon by Joseph Ejercito Estrada, this pardon shall take effect. Given under my hand, at the City of Manila, this 25th day of October, in the year of our Lord, 2007.

Signed,
Gloria M. Arroyo

Attested,
Ignacio R. Bunye,
Acting Executive Secretary.

Are you planning to pardon this guy too?

Cool way to cool the globe

2007-10-25T02:18:00.000+08:00

IS this a whacky way to cool the globe? It doesn't seem so.

DESPITE growing interest in clean energy technology, it looks as if we are not going to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide anytime soon. The amount in the atmosphere today exceeds the most pessimistic forecasts made just a few years ago, and it is increasing faster than anybody had foreseen.

Henning Wagenbreth

Even if we could stop adding to greenhouse gases tomorrow, the earth would continue warming for decades — and remain hot for centuries. We would still face the threat of water from melting glaciers lapping at our doorsteps.
What can be done? One idea is to counteract warming by tossing small particles into the stratosphere (above where jets fly). This strategy may sound far-fetched, but it has the potential to cool the earth within months.
Mount Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines that erupted in 1991, showed how it works. The eruption resulted in sulfate particles in the stratosphere that reflected the sun’s rays back to space, and as a consequence the earth briefly cooled.

Or we can also shoot missiles with the appropriate payload.

NBN: intrigue and witness-tampering as hearings resume

2007-10-24T18:22:00.000+08:00

The NBN hearings resume today. These two stories Paid witness to appear at NBN probe---Puentebella which came first, and Lacson:ex-ZTE consultant asks money for testimony suggest witness tampering, and there seems to be agreement as to the facts cited by the admin congressman and Ping Lacson. But what's the real story?

Glorietta 2: After bomb theory bombs, nature and source of gas remains mystery

2007-10-24T15:56:00.000+08:00

Notwithstanding their hedging about continuing to look at all angles, the authorities yesterday virtually ruled out a bomb blast in the Glorietta 2 incident. For NW, the absence of a blast crater or any other signs of shear and gashes on the equipment and walls of the basement is a sufficient condition to discard the bomb hypothesis. The sample testing positive for RDX is irrelevant, although doubting Juans and Juanas don't think so.

Crude but fairly informative and convincing presentations were issued by the PNP - Inter-agency anti-arson task force (IATF) Thunderbolt to the media here and here. There are diagrams, charts, photographs (many without labels and captions) and in sum the presentations are much more than I expected from our police, whose efforts must be recognized. The only spoilers are the faces, in news clips, of security adviser Norberto Gonzales, DILG secretary Ronaldo Puno, and palace mouth Ignacio Bunye, shameless clowns who had engaged in earlier fear-mongering.

Ayala Land casts doubt on theory

At noon yesterday, Ayala Land president presented an enumeration of facts to the press (and posted in their website at my request), tending to cast doubt on the gas explosion hypothesis. ABS-CBN chose to spin the story as Ayala Land Rejects PNP industrial blast theory which is a reasonable interpretation. The enumeration was reportedly finished only Tuesday night and shared with the authorities only yesterday morning. It appears that these so-called facts do not have much relevance to the preliminary findings. Here's a list of the facts Ayala presented:

GLORIETTA 2 BASEMENT

1. Basement dimensions: 178 sqm floor area; approx. ceiling height: 2.28m

2. Diesel fuel tank: Last used in June during last power outage; capacity: approx. 14,000 liters; estimated content on day of incident: 6,000 liters; the flash point of diesel contained is 72 degrees Celsius and auto ignition temperature is 220 degrees Celsius. There are no maintenance reports or observations by maintenance personnel of any aberrations to the diesel tank.

3. Fuel transfer pump: transfers diesel fuel from storage tank at basement 2 to day tank at the roof deck.

4. Ventilation: basement is ventilated by air entering the approx. 2.4m x 2.4m opening at stairwell connected to delivery bay area

5. Ambient room temperature: estimated range from 28 to 30 degrees Celsius

6. Grease trap: separates grease from wastewater entering the sump pit; maintained daily for one hour together with cleaning of basement.

7. Sump pits (there are two types of sump pit):

a. Kitchen sump pit (approx .1.5m x 1.5m x 2m): Wastewater from kitchens of five restaurants in Glorietta 2 enters the sump pit. The grease trap separates the grease from the wastewater (grease is extracted daily, every morning). A pump in kitchen sump pit pumps out wastewater to the main city sewer line automatically (there is a standby sump pump).

b. Waste sump pit (approx. 1.5m x 1.5m x 2m): Wastewater from toilets in a portion of Glorietta 2 is dumped into sump pit (21 water closets; 20 lavatories; 8 urinals). Due to the nature of customer use of toilets in restaurants, waste is seldom solid and mostly liquid (per our sewage expert opinion approx. 98% liquid). Wastewater enters sump pit and is pumped out to street sewer by a sump pump (there is a standby sump pump). Therefore, there is constant flow of mainly liquid wastewater from the toilets into the sump pit and on to the city sewer. Wastewater entering the sump pit stays in the sump pit for less than 24 hours. The usual decomposition process brought about by large amounts of solid matter in house septic tanks does not occur in this commercial sump pit.

The major element casting doubt on the gas explosion theory is the claim in item 7, which tends to show that there could not have been any significant methane generated by the sump pits, and the claim in the conference that there was nothing out of the ordinary reported by maintenance personnel in regard to the waste water system (the two sump pits and corresponding pumps). However, a maintenance man interviewed by police belies the latter claim. In regard to the amount of methane present, it depends on how much waste had accumulated contrary to the claim of a 24-hour maximum residence time. Also, it is possible that gas could have come from the sewer lines to which the pumps were connected (backflow) and this would have provided enough methane.

What can we make of the diesel tank and the role of the fuel in the explosion? The photos in the presentation show a rupture in the lateral joints of, and a hole in the steel plate covering. There appear to be no signs of soot anywhere. The diesel flash point seems irrelevant here, this parameter indicating the lowest temperature which generates enough vapor which, alone, can be ignited, but at which combustion stops if the ignition source is withdrawn. At temperatures below flash point, there is still some vaporization, and if the tank had a leak (not evidenced by police photos), these vapors would have escaped and mixed with the more volatile methane. The auto-ignition temperature is entirely irrelevant. If the tank had no leak, then, I suspect the methane ignited first, heating the tank, vaporizing the contents very quickly, rupturing the cover. The diesel fumes mix with the methane in part of the explosion. If you look inside the dieseltank you'd see that there is some fuel left (but not yet measured). The explosion could have bled the air dry of oxygen very quickly and/or had snuffing effect.

The claim that maintenance personnel reported no aberration with the diesel tank is also not very useful, since the last time the generators were on was in June.

In any case, what should be the most intellectually satisfying proof of the gas explosion theory would be a computer simulation or real scale model simulation or both.

RDX again

To some, the RDX positive test constitutes a loose end. I suppose the foreign investigators would have tested a sample from the same material (found on the ground floor by an Army man) but could not replicate the result. That should be the end of that. No need to explain further that RDX is also found in other (non-explosive) substances.

In the press conference, no reporters confronted Ayala Land spokesman Alfie Reyes about his earlier televised claim the basement was under the control of the Makati Supermarket operators, which he no longer repeated.

Mr. Ayala said the corporation would do right whatever the final findings. While it is easy for them to purchase reasonable doubt at a reasonable cost in the criminal and civil proceedings that will follow, let's hope he keeps his word.

(Glorietta 2 constitutes a mere 0.34 percent of total Ayala Land revenues).

How a Filipino insurgent was tortured. Damn, I wish our confirmation process was like theirs

2007-10-22T03:32:00.000+08:00

I've been following the confirmation hearings (on C-Span and the NYT) of Michael Mukasey, George W.'s nominee to replace the unlamented Alberto Gonzales, and wish that our processes were as rigorous.

Last night, Mukasey was grilled by senators (mostly Democrats, among them Stephen Whitehouse of Rhode Island)) about his views on executive privilege, non-disclosure agreements, and the public's right to information. His answers were diametrically opposed to those of his predecessor.

However, Mukasey failed to assuage fears in regard to the use of torture in extracting information from terrorism suspects. He hedged big time in regard to water-boarding, saying that if water-boarding is determined to be torture, then it would be unconstitutional. The senators could not extract any more information on his views on the matter, stopping short of physically and mentally torturing him on the matter any further.

What really caught my attention was the account recounted by one of the senators of how a US soldier was prosecuted for using water-boarding on a Filipino insurgent in 1901.

I wish I could get my hands on the transcripts of Raul Gonzales's confirmation hearings, though I understand that he has never been confirmed and that the Gloria just keeps re-appointing her sycophant on a temporary basis. What is the limit to the executive's power to reappoint? I don't know, but this clearly runs counter to what the Constitution intends.

I am tempted to make a bigotted remark about people with the surname Gonzales, but I know better because I have so many friends with that surname and I have no wish to inflict a tortured argument on you.

Glorietta 2: accidents, beliefs, surprises, and relief

2007-10-22T00:04:00.000+08:00

"The opinions for which people are willing to fight all belong to one of three classes which this scepticism condemns. When there are rational grounds for an opinion, people are content to set them forth and wait for them to operate. In such cases people do not hold their opinions with passion; they hold them calmly, and set forth their reasons quietly. The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.

The extent to which beliefs are based upon evidence is very much less than believers suppose."
Bertrand Russell in Sceptical Essays

My early doubts about the bomb hypothesis in the Glorietta blast arose after seeing the footage of the area and the anecdotes of those in the vicinity during the incident, and early reports that the blast had been determined to have emanated from the basement, and assumptions about the 'reasonableness' or cost-minimizing behavior of terrorists, and the materials and equipment the basement was said to contain. For example, why would terrorists plant a bomb in the basement (one investigator speculated that 10 kilos of C4 could have been used) when much more impact could be expected at better locations?)

In my earlier post, I said:

I have not closed my mind to a methane-based explosion, more consistent with the footage I’ve seen. Likely I will be proven wrong.

At least three media reports today tend to lend more support to the accident hypothesis: the Inquirer's, ABS-CBN's, and GMA.tv's investigators doubt bomb theory. What stands out in all these reports are the early signs of NCR police director Geary Barias's independence. Whether this is due to character or fear of being contradicted by parallel efforts of foreign investigative agencies, it is still a hopeful sign that the real facts will come out from the official probe. We must aslo note that Barias's refusal to rule out the accident hypothesis appears to be a direct and courageous contradiction of the Gloria and the Venable and silly national security adviser, who claimed that terrorists were on a fund-raising effort by way of demonstration, perversely trying to make political hay out of the tragedy. Surprisingly too, Senator Panfilo Lacson, whose democratic impulses I doubt, counseled circumspection and sobriety in contrast to the amateurish, naive and messianic Senator Trillanes, whose belief in the incredible Operation Greenbase made me cringe in disbelief. (Disclosure: Geary Barias's activist brother Manny, with a medical practice in the US, is a long-time friend).

Here's part of GMA.tv's report:

On whether the blast might have been caused by other factors besides a bomb, Barias said "anything is possible."

He said investigators confirmed that the origin of the explosion was located at the basement of the Glorietta 2 and not on the first floor.

Barias said there was a possibility that the blast was caused by an accident rather than an explosive device. "We are also looking into that. All angles are being explored."

Last Saturday before a National Security Council meeting in Camp Crame, Barias told reporters that investigators took samples from the first floor and found no trace of nitrates.

"The explosion damaged the floor, under which revealed an underground which serves as a tool room. There was supposed to have been an oil, water, and grease depot there," Barias said then.

Later in that meeting, the PNP Crime Laboratory and the Philippine National Police (PNP) Bomb Data Center said they found traces of RDX, an ingredient used in explosives including C4 which is used by the military.

But on Sunday, Barias said that the presence of RDX would have to be verified by "additional testing."

In a television interview, Alfie Reyes, corporate spokesman of Ayala Land Inc. which owns the mall, said he would leave the issue of what caused the blast to investigators.

He clarified that the basement where the blast might have originated was being occupied by one of their tenants at the Makati Supermarket. "We are also trying to obtain information from them because they are the ones who know what is in that basement and what activities, if any, occurred in that basement," Reyes said.

He added that the Makati Supermarket had access and security control over the basement.

An investigator at the area told the Philippine Daily Inquirer Sunday afternoon that tests done by bomb experts from the US revealed no traces of RDX or any other explosive material. "Their results are negative for any solid explosive material. They have a different style [of detecting RDX]."

The investigator, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to reveal details of the investigation, also explained that the Americans took a swab sample of the explosive material from the bombsite and smudged it on the TV screen of an analysis machine which gave them a chemical composition of the sample. "We asked them to calibrate their machine and try again. They still got a negative result," the source said.

The PNP Crime Laboratory, on the other hand, drops a certain liquid into debris recovered from the bombsite. "When the sample turns a certain color, then it will indicate the kind of chemicals present. But it could be that the samples are contaminated," the source said.

The source said that at least six Americans from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the US Navy Seals and an Explosive Ordnance Division (EOD) unit have been helping out in the probe. Later in the afternoon, experts from Australia also arrived.

The American experts, the source said, tested six samples from different locations at least three times. "There were samples taken from 500 meters from the blast site and also at the seat or source of the blasts, in this case the hole that was caused."

He also confirmed that the blast originated from a bunker oil container the size of a 20-foot container van located near a septic tank. The area also contained aircon exhaust vents, a generator set, empty diesel tanks, and fuel that might have emitted dangerous fumes.

"The confluence of the mixture of gases trapped inside a confined space will look for an outlet and needs release," the expert said.

The source also noted that the blast did not cause fire, as compared to explosions caused by C4 or TNT which would cause black or gray smoke. "The kind of damage we saw is consistent with enormous pressure being released. Gases like methane don't show up in the kind of tests already done," said the source.

The source said investigators should be finished with their probe of the basement before midnight Sunday.

I heard the interview by ANC's Lia Andanar Yu of Ayala Land spokesperson Alfie Reyes, and it was apparent that he was already laying the groundwork for a legal defense against what could be a large liability suit. He pointed out that the basement was under the control of the tenant, Makati Supermarket. I wonder what else were in the basement aside from a 4000-liter diesel tank, a waste oil/water separator (I suppose a centrifuge; having worked in a diesel power plant ages ago, I know how such things work), grease, and a septic tank. A very explosive combination.

Some pundits had seized upon a PNP chemist's hesitation about mentioning C4 as early 'evidence' of a coverup. But one test of one sample indicating trace amounts of RDX is far from conclusive. More than eight semesters of chemistry (basic, organic, inorganic, quantitative, qualitative, biochem, phychem) taught me that most tests have varying rates of false positives, when a test is wrong for various reasons, whether the intrinsic limitation of a test or the carelessness of a lab technician.

(Aside: It took me a long while to get over the fact that I tested positive for shabu during the last renewal of my driver's license. The colorimetric drug test (urinalysis) also tested for cannabis, and I was tempted to taunt the technician that the test was wrong on both counts. I did not because the technician had made up her mind based on my appearance ---profiling? (I hope you get this joke). Eventually, I refused to take the more expensive confirmatory blood test and asserted my rights and returned to the clinic, and without paying any additional fee, got a negative result. The other test mentioned in the GMA report, is diffusion spectroscopy, a much more expensive one but with lesser tolerance for error.
When I was with the Ministry of Energy in the early 80's, I was involved in the field and lab testing of the effectiveness of a colorimetric method (a marker dye added to the potential contaminants) for testing 'adulteration' of regular and premium gasoline with diesel and kerosene. If the sample tested positive, a second test, called RON test (research octane number which measures the anti-knock characteristic of a fuel) using, guess what, a bomb calorimeter, was used as a confirmatory test. Before the marker dye, the primitive method was a field test using a hydrometer to test the density (or specific gravity) of a sample compared to 'pure' gasoline).

What we really need to see are the hypothesis-testing protocols of the investigators, laying out a series of logical if-then-else statements. While it might be too much to expect that they would be familiar with Karl Popper's obsession with the falsifiability of hypotheses as a fundamental criterion in scientific statements, I am willing to be surprised, as I was with Dean Jorge Bocobo's post on gaseous deflagrations.

If the investigators eventually come to the conclusion that it was an accident, we might all be relieved to know that the Islamists and military rebels are not that stupid and that the Gloria is not that ruthless. Perverse? Perhaps...

The CSI on Glorietta 2; RDX, C4, etc; and the economics of speculation and terror risk mitigation

2007-10-21T03:31:00.000+08:00

As of midnight last night, government blast forensics experts still could not conclude whether the explosion in Glorietta 2 which killed 10 and injured more than 100 others Friday was that of a bomb. Although traces of RDX (Research Department X), which constitutes 90% of the plastic explosive C4 were detected from the debris, it was pointed out that this has pharmacological uses (among them as a rat poison). Thus the speculation continues unabated as to the perpetrators, their motives, and the final effects.

The admonition against speculation came a bit late, because by then many had formed their own conclusions. Also, the right to speculate is an inalienable human right, the exercise of which is a matter of survival in a situation where the supply curve for truth and information, especially from official sources, hardlly ever satisfies public demand. In any case, speculation has not yet been declared an exclusive privilege of the executive. “Don’t speculate too soon,” the Venable national security adviser was advising. (So when is speculation timely?) Not so soon after, the security adviser was peddling his speculative take that ‘terrorists’ were on a fund-raising enterprise and that the blast was a simple demonstration of potential for the benefit of benefactors.

Having read and heard the reports, speculative and otherwise, in the past 36 hours, I was beginning to fear I would have nothing left to speculate on, as the ‘facts’ came in trickles. On second thought, I concluded, that would never happen, because I bet, even after the official reports are issued, classified, disseminated, and regurgitated, many of us would still be speculating on which facts were suppressed, how and which observations were ‘doctored’, and how the final and official versions of the truth were spun. In fact, even before the Glorietta incident, many of us were in the midst of speculating on the NBN and the Malacanang and House bribes.

(A broad aside: I suspect the speculation industry is one of the large emerging contributors to the national economic output. But being mostly in the informal sector, the value therefrom might not be reflected in official estimates. Maybe if these did, we might be growing at more than 10% annually. Or, conversely and more plausibly, our unrecognized and underpaid statisticians might have included such output but forgot to warn us, which explains our disbelief).

The output of the speculation industry is siginificant because of the abovementioned market conditions. On the supply (sellers) side, there’s a large pool of unemployed and underpaid/employed and self-proclaimed analysts/pundits who think they are bright, or at least brighter than those offering official truths. Thus, the supply curve is almost flat and also hardly distinguishable from the X-axis. This explains why, notwithstanding the large demand, the marginal price is close to zero in equilibrium. If you can think graphically, you’ll agree that the price-quantity product would still be a significant part of GDP.

(Another broad aside: some of the buyers are also self-generators, meaning they supply their own demand. If they are full of themselves they offer their excess supply to the informal and formal markets; otherwise they find time to appreciate the speculation and insights of others in the market. Most buyers, I suspect, are of the passive/voyeuristic kind (the gotum), experiencing gratification without ever thinking how to use the information to introduce changes in their lives and society at large. In the market I describe, the sellers are called speculators, the incident speculated on is called speculatum, and the elements or parts of the speculatum are speculatees, whose motives, means, opportunities and ideologies are the subject of the speculation or speculating; and the master of the speculatees is called the sputum).

The market conditions I describe are real and I am led to conclude that this type of speculation never creates a bubble that will burst or explode in our faces. In sharp contrast to speculation in commodity markets, where speculators have been known to lose their shirts and underwear, the players in our kind of speculation have nothing to lose: one is always better off speculating than having to swallow the shit our government excretes.

The economics of terror risk mitigation

What if the incident was indeed Islamic or rightwing or leftwing terrorism? I assert that the latter two are more reasonable and more predictable without rigorous discussion and proof. Let me tackle the first. These guys and girls are not so bright and we can probably treat the events they perpetrate as random acts impervious to benefit-cost analysis on their part, especially when some of them don’t value their own lives. Suicide bombers, unfortunately, are part of the equation and the amorphous inequalities we have to confront. So what then? I contend that the reasonable thing to do is to take the risk as part of life and mitigate the risk rationally. There is a large bodega of economics literature which shows that people don’t really behave reasonably, much less rationally. This is why, in the face of a large set of risks, our prioritization in terms of costs and benefits, leaves much to be desired. We always confront a large set of dangers to our well-being and we need to think of priorities soberly. Yes, terrorism is a real threat. But there are other graver threats the mitigation of which costs less. Think about poverty and environmental problems. We should allocate resources and attention guided by the facts, I hope.

Let me also point out that the risks from terrorism are inequitably distributed. On the side of victims, these are mostly urban and upper class, while the costs of mitigation, I suspect, are borne by taxpayers at large. You think that’s fair? To the extent that mall operators enhance security, well and good, as that cost will inevitably be passed on to shoppers.

The CSI on G2, RDX, C4 etcetera

I can only hope that the forensics experts are professionals, especially after observing that NCR police office director Geary Barias has maintained an open mind after premature disclosures. He has refused to jump to conclusions, though he is privately entitled to his own speculations. I have yet to see or hear of any systematic data gathering insofar as eyewitness accounts (a good collection is provided in Manolo Quezon’s blog) is concerned. Also, in a competent CSI, investigators are supposed to re-enact the incident. Including a time/space account of where the fatalities and other casualties were.

Were the dead properly autopsied? Have all the injured been interviewed? Have all the footages been examined?

Barias has said that he still could not rule out an accidental gaseous explosion as the blast has been determined as coming from the basement. What did the basement house? He said there was sewage ‘grease’. He could have meant waste oil and solid waste sludge. Have his investigators interviewed people in charge of the solid waste management system in the mall? I have not closed my mind to a methane-based explosion, more consistent with the footage I’ve seen. Likely I will be proven wrong. But I reserve and assert my right to speculate.

GMA and JDV: Liars, paradoxes, dilemmas

2007-10-19T04:58:00.000+08:00

How will the standoff between JDV and GMA finally be resolved? In the past decade, at least three groups of economists have been awarded the Nobel prize for economics for expanding theory and application of game theory, which applies when each actor’s move/s depends on her/his expectation of the opponent’s move.

The classic example, unfortunately, is the prisoners’ dilemma, which was originally meant to illustrate how two actors, mistrusting each other in a one-shot game, would, acting in their own narrow-minded interests, forego the best outcome. This is because the two prisoners find it in their own best interest to betray rather than cooperate with each other. The sub-optimal equilibrium applies when there is no allowance for learning or repeated interactions between the players.

In the case of JDV and GMA however, it is in our best interest that once they’ve decided on their strategies, the outcome should be final and they both finally rest on their laurels and in their graves. This means that we need to design a game where there are no further interactions. How? Life without parole for both of them, and they self-destruct.

The Liar’s Paradox

A related problem in logic and philosophy is the Liar’s paradox. GMA says in a televised interview that she has asked for an investigation of the bribery scandal. Clearly, she is saying “I’m a liar.” Anyone who takes that statement at face value would face an unsolvable problem. How can she be telling the truth as she says she is lying. The argument is circular and the only solution is by appreciating a context outside the original statement. This is why Rene Saguisag’s demand for an independent inquiry acquires relevance.

Goodbye to long-winded arguments

2007-10-19T04:02:00.000+08:00

In the early 1990's I had never-ending arguments with environmentalists about why the National Power Corporation did not include wind energy in its power portfolio. I would always answer that the costs were too high. I said I would agree if there were a democratic process where power consumers would be made aware that the wind option would significantly increase their bills.

Now here is a PCIJ feature by Jaileen Jimeno which finally proves the point, self -serving it might be for me. Since 2005, the power facility Jimeno discusses in the article has been operating.
I must point out , however, that she missed one important point, the economics of wind energy. Since the early 90's , costs have fallen by 80% while costs for the alternatives, especially for fossil fuels, mostly oil and coal, have been steadily increasing. Thus, it is no surprise that wind is now competitive and will become more so henceforth.

NBN: The devil hides the detail

2007-10-19T03:33:00.000+08:00

The devil, it is said, is in the detail. Unfortunately for us, our senators and journalists have not shown much resolve in examining details, maybe out of plain incompetence or laziness. In this case, too, it is the devil herself hiding the detail.

When I first learned that the NEDA had refused the Senate’s request for the NBN documents, I couldn’t believe it. After the initial denial, I wanted to puke. I was so mad that for the first time this year, I honked my horn on the way to Greenbelt to watch a film in the Spanish movie festival. And I was doing 80 instead of my usual wimpy 60 kph.

You may not know it but the documents requested, at least some of them anyway, had already been made available to the media and posted in at least one website. I’m referring to (1) the minutes of the joint NEDA-ICC cabinet committee and the ICC technical board held March 26, 2007, and (2) the evaluation report of the NEDA infrastructure committee dated March 29. .

In a previous post, I pointed out that even these two documents in themselves constitute the smoking gun in the allegations of scandal in which the president was a willing conspirator, at worst, and as an accessory at best. Let me now explain in greater detail.

During that joint meeting, the ICC secretariat presented to the members a status report on the the NBN project . In the form and substance it had been presented to the last meeting, the minutes said, the NBN, covering the needs of national government agencies and city and municipal branches, and 23,549 elementary and high schools in the country’s first and second class municipalities, the whole project would have an economic internal rate of return (EIRR) of only13.01% Because the hurdle rate of NEDA is 15%, the NPV was a negative (-) P1.58B ), clearly a no go. Also, the Chinese government had indicated that it would not fund the connectivity to the schools, and the alternative to be explored was to replace the connectivity to 23,549 barangays (no mention in which cities and municipalities) and the NPV would be P652.13M and the EIRR would be a marginally improved 15.8%.

Recall that during the Senate blue ribbon hearings, Neri had asserted that the project, regardless of modality and financing sources, had an NPV more of than P10B and an EIRR of close to 30%.

IN any case, the presentation of the secretariat’s ended with the following recommendation:

In line with the government’s thrust of promoting digital infrastructure development for provision of ICT services across the country to address the digital divide, the Secretariat favorably recommends the project subject to the resolution of the above issues, especially on the replacement of school beneficiaries with barangay offices.

Three days later (!), the infrastructure committee of the NEDA-ICC issued its report. With the figures cited by Neri in the Senate hearings. But first, let me discuss what transpired after the presentation of the secretariat.

“Neri noted that the terms and conditions for the proposed loan for the project are not as concessionary as those for other Chinese-assisted projects such as the Northrail and the CEP projects. With an annual interest rate of 4% and repayment period of 10 years, inclsuive of 3 years grace period, Secretary Neri added that the terms are actually almost commercial.”

On project costs

Secretary Neri noted that among the alternatives being presented by the Secretariat were one in which the schools not covered by the CEP were considered, and one which excluded said schools. He inquired on whether school site engineering cost amounting to almost P1.4 M will be dropped in the event that the schools will be dropped from the project. He also sought clarification if the expense would be the same if the barangay offices, instead of the schools, are considered the project beneficiaries. The Secretariat confirmed that the site engineering cost will be dropped if the schools are excluded and that the cost would be the same if the barangay offices, instead of the schools, are considered as project beneficiaries. (Note that the locations of the schools and the barangays are not in the same geographical area.

On economic benefits

Secretary Neri inquired on how savings will be generated as a result of the retirement of old equipment. The Secretariat clarified that savings will be generated as the proponent will no longer have to buy expensive and non-readily available spare parts for the old analog system, as well as eliminate the cost for regular site inspection/network trouble-shooting and the required manpower due to the computerized /automatic network management feature, thereby resulting in savings in terms of operations and maintenance costs. The Secretariat added that the old eqipment will not be sold and in fact some of them will still be used .

Secetary Nery sought clarification on how VoIP savings translate into benefits for the government. The Secretariat replied that with the project, the government will reduce its fixed line subscription by as much as 50% and its fax and mobile phone costs by about 80%.

With regard to Secretary Nery’s inquiry on how the benefits resulting from having a centralized IDC are quantified, the Secretariat explained that the IDC can host all government applications software and databases. Thus, eliminating individual data centers and corresponding O&M costs.

In the March 26 meeting, there were a number of issues left hanging as indicated by the following:

The terms of the projected loan from the Chinese government as pointed out byh Neri;
Skepticism over how the savings were calculated. In the project evaluation report by the Infrastructure staff, the savings were in fact referred to as assumptions and not as best estimates or calculations. How can these be included in an economic valuation?
Finance Secretary Gary Teves asserted that the project as represented had to be clarified with the president because, in his own understanding, the president had a different concept.
DOF Undersecretary Paul had doubts about the projects consistency with existing policy.

Yet, in the Infrastructure staff report of March 29, the EIRR had shot up to 30% from the 15.8% initially presented in the March 26 meeting. This is clearly a case of underestimating costs and bloating the benefits to maximize the attractiveness of the project. Let me just focus on the projected benefits in the NEDA infrastructure staff’s spreadsheet calculations:

The savings from foregone operation and maintenance costs of the old DOTC equipment were included throughout the project life, at more than P500M per year for 15 years. As I asserted in a previous post, only the mentally retarded would count unnecessary MOE as savings when the system would have been useless in the near future anyway. If you have a car which will have to be discarded in a year or two, you just decide to stop using it period, and this decision is not related to your buying a new car later.
The savings from VOIP/landline/mobile subscriptions and internet connections are dubious, to be kind. As I’ve said, the NEDA infrastructure staff, taking DOTC figures at face value, referred to these as assumptions and not as rigorous estimates.
As for the internet connection savings, I noticed that these were assumed to decrease by 5% annually to reflect both greater competition and technological progress. Five percent? Just this year alone, I saved more than 50% by switching from Pacific to Sky DSL. In his Senate testimony, Neri lamented the fact that commercial broadband costs in the country were as much as a multiple of a hundred to costs abroad. If he had properly studied the calculations of his own staff, he himself would have concluded that the broadband service savings are ghost benefits, especially if Neri believed that the system can be improved with better regulation and freer entry.
In the meeting of March 26, Neri was uncomfortable with the 4% interest indicated by the Chinese government. Yet, in the NEDA infra staff evaluation, the loan interest was assumed to be at a maximum of 3%, a 25% reduction.

In short, the real and final question is, what happened between March 26 and March 29, when so many basic and controversial questions were resolved by the infra staff ?(hint: the Senate should ask Ruben Reinoso to testify; there might even be no further need to hear from Neri).

During the Senate hearings, Neri was asked if there was anything irregular in the time lapse between the economic evaluation report and the final NEDA board approval on April 20. He replied that this was not unusual. Except that April 20 was the eve of the signing of the contract in China, witnessed by the president herself.

The Philipine Onion's exclusive with Corazon Aquino

2007-10-09T01:34:00.000+08:00

Let me reprint in full The Philippine Onion's exclusive interview with Corazon C. Aquino"

TPO: Mam , we haven't heard from you since the outrage over "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" hit the pages.

CCA: At first I thought they were referring to my prodigal daughter Kris. But when I read the apology, I was sufficiently appeased. It was neither of us.

TPO: But didn't you file a libel case against the columnist who claimed you hid under a bed during one of the more serious coups during your administration?

CCA: What bed? Which bed? No, that was different. Louie questioned my capability to be commander-in-chief. That really tended to undermine faith in my government, right.

TPO: Uhmmm.

CCA: Hey were you ever in the Malacanang press corps. You look familiar... A hardy bunch, they never seemed to be downed by the chicken liver pate I gave them at Christmas. By the salmonella I mean...

TPO: I wasn't born yet Mrs. President.

CCA: Anyway, do you know that all you political pundits overestimate your influence? Do you know that the most popular columns are not Manolo Quezon's nor Conrad de Quiroses's. Not even that guy who calls himself DJB Rizalist. The most popular column is Dolly Carvajal's and she has advised me that Kris's influence far outshines mine.

TPO: Maybe mam, but...

CCA: No ifs and buts. I may have the persona of an outstanding Catholic, but there are things you don't know about me. If only you knew what I whispered into an ear of Chairman Abalos...

Los Ultimos de Filipinas: 'History from the Vanquished'

2007-10-09T01:02:00.000+08:00

Premiered last night as part of the ongoing Spanish film festival in Manila was Los Ultimos de Filipinas, a cinematic account of the 'motherland's' stragglers in the Philippine-Spanish war. In terms of cinematic value, and considering technology in 1945, I would rate the movie excellent.

Before you write/right me off as harboring a colony of germs in my brain, hear this.

The executive director of Instituto Cervantos was more than ten minutes late, and apologized for the wrong thing, the absence of Spain's ambassador, who had to collect a parliamentary delegation from their country at the airport.

In April this year, there was a piano concert to commemorate the bombing of Guernica, the oil rendition of which was immortalized by Picasso in a painting which now greets the entrance of the United Nations Security Council. The Instituto's director was also late and tried to excuse himself with reference to heavy traffic. Because I was seated close to them, I heard the ambassador publicly berate the guy. "No excuses, por favor," the higher ranked diplomat reminded the lower.

Now back to the movie. It's one of the rare occasions when the victors get a view of how the 'vanquished' want to see themselves. In 1945, Jose Rodriguez explained, the Spanish government supported art partly to instill patriotism (often the refuge of scoundrels and torturers). One of the things which I find mysterious about Spaniards is why it has taken them such a long time to reflect on the rule of Franco. It has only been in recent years when the unmarked graves of the Republicans and resisters have been unearthed.

The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm has a kinder view of Franco's rule, saying in so many words that there was a fine line between Nazism (with whom Franco was allied) and plain good old authoritarianism. Quesas.

One of the lesser known of George Orwell's works is Homage to Catalonia, where he recalls his sad tale as a volunteer in the Republican army while passing himself off as a 'journalist.' Here we see shades of Jack Reed of Ten Days fame. In his account he referred to the tardiness of his comrades as a racial trait. Some form of bigotry is woven into history and the popular imagination as a result of our humanity, I am wont to say.

NBN: The NEDA's benefits and costs and where they hid the 'smoking gun'

2007-10-09T00:54:00.000+08:00

In the wee small hours of morning one Sunday (September 30) I chanced upon DOTC secretary Leandro Mendoza on DZMM’s teleradyo, close to faking an O (whether an Oh or an Ouch depends on your particular perversity) over his defense of the NBN deal, as if it was his first chance to do so. I don’t know how many other insomniacs caught his convoluted arguments, but the few who did were probably moved to swearing off on some nocturnal pleasures.

The friendly anchor asked him why he didn’t explain the benefits during the Senate hearings. He replied that Asec. Lorenzo Formoso was more technically competent to explain those. I’ve read Formoso’s tables and these didn’t explain how he extrapolated the baseline specs and costs of ZTE to come out with comparable figures for AHI and Arescom, nor identify the strange alchemy he resorted to make lemons into apples.

I have since then been able to look at the NEDA evaluation report (March 29, 2009) and the ICC-NEDA cabinet committtee minutes (March 26,2007). In the meeting Romulo Neri and even the finance department representatives raised relevant points which should have taken the ICC secretariat and the NEDA’s infrastructure staff months to address. But note that the final ICC approval was issued April 20. If these do not a constitute a ‘smoking gun’ to you, I can only surmise that you’ve never fired one.

In the ICC cabinet committee meeting, Neri asked the secretariat to clarify how savings could be reckoned from the abandonment of old and unserviceable equipment maintained by the DOTC. A very valid point which I examined in the infrastructure staff’s report.

If you had an old car on the brink of being unserviceable, junking it, even before you decide to buy a new one, is the rational thing to do. Yet, in the report of the infrastructure staff, ‘savings’ from deciding to stop maintaining that car were counted as part of the benefits of the NBN. As Mar Roxas would probably say, Stunning! Indeed.

In the meeting, Neri was also skeptical about the savings from the national and local government’s telecommunication expenses, and Senator Roxas was correct to raise doubts about these during the hearings. In fact, it is difficult to explain how his staff could have explained these to Neri in such a short time. It is obvious that they were just forced to accept the unverified figures from the DOTC.

I of course know that the sudden and long gap in the hearings have led to so many conspiracy theories, victimizing the bible-quoting chair of the blue-ribbon committee and the real estate agent who happens to be president of the smaller chamber. Also, Neri’s invocation of executive privilege has led to Jarius Bondoc’s invocation of his right to invoke moral choice as a citizen.

But Bondoc’s revelations may not really have that much force. As Yawyaw, my three-year-old neighbor would say, that’s all Hershey, and while delicious, not admissible in court. What should be admissible in all courts, legal and popular, are the documents and what these imply.

Last Friday, the UP School of Economics organized a forum featuring past NEDA directors general. I wasn't there so I was not able to say my piece. I would have pointed out that even during the time of FVR, the NEDA's evaluations were trumped by Malacanang's judgements, especially in regard to some power projects.

GMA ecstatic over wrong things, says former Clinton aide

2007-10-08T10:43:00.000+08:00

Joseph Romm, assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy during the Clinton administration, was unhappy with the remarks of GMA during her recent appearance in a forum of Clinton's Global Initiative. In his post "Why sustainable development is so damn hard, Philippine edition". he quotes the president:

Yesterday, I also announced, for the second time, an initiative where we are encouraging economic zones to be set up around the geothermal sites, because not only can geothermal fields give us power, they also give us jobs because the local governments earn royalties from the geothermal power. And they, by law, they can only use most of it for electricity. So they subsidize the electric bills of the constituents. So now we are creating economic zones there, so that businesses, like electronics, for instance, power incentive electronics firms, will locate there. So aside from the subsidized power bills from the local governments, they will also have the usual investment incentives. So these areas, which are usually far from central Manila, will now have industries, as well as power."

At first I thought she did not have the law right, as I was thinking about provisions in the energy department's regulation (1-94) which does not really impose power rate subsidies in the use of the funds generated, see the power sector reform tracker.

The Generation Company and/or energy resource developer sets aside one centavo per kilowatt-hour (P 0.01/kWh) of the total electricity sales as financial benefit of the host communities of such generation facility, where applicable. The financial benefits are given directly to the host LGU or region, especially to the community and people affected while equitable preferential benefits are being provided to the host region. The accruals of the financial benefits are allocated for the following:

Electrification Fund (EF);
Development and Livelihood Fund (DLF); and
Reforestation, Watershed Management, Health and/or Environment Enhancement Fund (RWMHEEF).
This is actually the pertinent provision GMA was referring to, in section 294 of the Philippine Local Government Code (RA 7160), which reads:
Development and Livelihood Projects. - The proceeds from the share of local government units pursuant to this chapter shall be appropriated by their respective sanggunian to finance local government and livelihood projects: Provided, however, That at least eighty percent (80%) of the proceeds derived from the development and utilization of hydrothermal. geothermal, and other sources of energy shall be applied solely to lower the cost of electricity in the local government unit where such a source of energy is located.

On a more positive note, the system of subsidies and cross-subsidies in the Philippine power sector has been reformed a great deal since the passage of the EPIRA. For one, most of the inter-grid (among the three major island groups Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao) and inter-class (between industrial/commercial and residential) subsidies have been virtually eliminated. What remain are the intra-class subsidies in the residential sector with the ‘institutionalization’ of ‘lifeline’ rates supposed to be for the poorest among the poor in all the franchise areas.

The new system of lifeline rates is much better than the old one, where each franchise area had almost complete leeway over them, but still is not good enough. For instance, in the Meralco area, households consuming up to 100 kilowatt-hours a month are subsidized even though this threshold is way above what poor households consume on average (as determined by the official povety count). Historically there are two possible motivations for such lifeline rates.

The more compelling is the notion that the poorest households underconsume electricity because they don’t consider the positive effects on the children’s education and their own access to media and social connectivity have on the rest of society, coupled with unwarranted coupling because of limited possibilities for pleasure at night.

The other is with society’s desire to work toward equality of opportunities and incomes/outcomes. Most economists agree that this objective could be pursued much better through outright cash handouts rather than subsidies for specific goods.

What alarms me in the Philippine context is the ‘populist’ attempt by the current administration to work for the granting of special electricity rates to many special zones, defeating the purpose of the power sector reform act. It is in this light that GMA’s announcement must be viewed. She had no hand in the enactment of the local government code but instead of working to revise the pertinent provisions, it panders to some special interests. Note that the subsidized rates are based on a fixed total to use for subsidization and would have the effect of raising residential rates in the affected communities. In my own estimation, greater industrial activity would lead to more pollution. While the increase might not be that much in the overall inventory, it is the intent and the pandering to special interests which is worrying.

Chinese Embassy leaks Philippine Senator's letter of apology

2007-10-07T00:48:00.001+08:00

More from the Philippine Onion:

Before the end of office hours Friday, the Chinese Embassy in the Philippines leaked excerpts from the letter of the senator who chairs the foreign relations committee, and its terse reply.

What we gleaned from the English translation of the embassy's response, provided by the Taiwanese diplomatic office (otherwise known as the Manila Economic and Cultural Office or MECO), was that PROC officials gave some welcome comfort to the Philippine senator. (Read this with some grain of salt; officially, China claims Taiwan is part of its sovereign territory).

When she went ballistic like a wayward missile in a hearing on the NBN, the senator berated China as the cradle of corruption in the East. In her letter, she pleaded temporary insanity and revealed that she was also afflicted with a rare disease which leads to involuntary movements of her mouth and tongue. "Only during full moons do I understand what I'm saying," the senator confessed.

"Don't worry," the letter from the Chinese embassy said, "we have our own share of crazy people."

Sources in the senator's office said the letter from the Chinese ambassador came with kyamoy, dikyam, 200 pieces of white rabbit. siopao, and pansit. Amazing, said she, but where's the Maling?

The apology was accepted without protest, as was the reply.

The Agony and Crucifixion of Jarius Bondoc

2007-10-06T23:37:00.000+08:00

Apparently, there is unanimity in anonymity, at least among some journalists in the Phlippines. (According to an obscure theorem in set theory, one can always find a set small enough to discover homogeneity.) In The Big Picture last Thursday, Ricky Carandang featured an exclusive with Jarius Bondoc, followed by a forum with Juliet Javellana and John Nery of the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Vergel Santos of Business Day. At first, they all said they had no right to pass moral judgment on Bondoc for ‘ratting’ on Romulo Neri in the NBN scandal. Then. near the end of the show, they all agreed that what Bondoc did was ‘unethical.’ They would not do what he did, they said self-righteously and apparently satisfied with themselves.

So a fine thin line must be drawn between ethics and morality. Where that line is and with what pen it is drawn escapes me, and probably all the rest of you not familiar with the workings of the press, whether in the Philippines and elsewhere, populated in the main by innumerate high school graduates accepted by journalism departments teaching kids arithmetic and algebra are instruments of repression.

I do not contest the assertion that, owing to special circumstances, some news sources need to have their identities protected. Especially if their ‘outing’ would threaten their physical survival. What I’m uncomfortable with is that continued institutional protection of anonymity encourages cowardice and fiction in newspapers. I think that if we phase out that protection, we will eventually be braver and stop tolerating scandalous behavior.

Let me mention three cases, if memory serves.

The first, on a Dr. Kelly, one of the weapons inspectors in Iraq before the invasion. A BBC radio reporter was fired after it was determined that he molested and abused the facts and his notebook in his story on Kelly, who lent credence to suspicions that the alleged threat was ‘sexed up.”

The second, Deep Throat, in the Watergate scandal which led to the resignation of Richard Nixon. The sore throat’s family eventually decided to identify him. In that case, however, Woodward and Bernstein had other sources whom they followed up from the Throat’s leads.

And there is a third instance, one that Carandang mentioned in his program but of which he had no clear grasp. An American woman reporter (J. Miller) was ordered by a court to identify her source on the ‘outing’ of ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose husband had earlier been sent to Niger and whose report dismissed or dissed reports of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program. She was detained for contempt but was eventually released. (Scooter Libby was convicted by the court but was pardoned by George W.).

I’m trying to recall a lesson on the vision and aspirations of my favorite philosopher. He said that if we value our humanity, we have to reclaim our ‘wholeness’ and integrity. If we continue with specialization as capitalism suggests, we will eventually end up being mushrooms, believing wholeness and integrity are concepts alien to the other. That to me is The Real Picture, big and small.

Jon Stewart Apologizes to Filipinos

2007-10-06T10:46:00.000+08:00

Breaking news from The Philippine Onion:

Producers of the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart have apologized to Filipinos who took offense at the segment starring Samantha Bee titled "Are we ready for a woman president?" In that segment, the word 'slut!' was scrawled on a tv picture of former President Corazon Aquino.

The alleged slur came on the heels of the outrage sparked by the season opener of Desperate Housewives, which had the character played by Teri Hatcher wanting to verify whether her doctor came from a med school in the Philippines. ABC, show producer, has already clarified that it did not mean to disparage Filipino health professionals.

In the public apology, Jon Stewart explained that they had the wrong Philippine woman president. But in a further insult, Samantha (won't let it) Bee asked Philippine journalists to check the word 'satire,' used to refer to the program.

Anonymous sources told the Philippine Onion that in a forthcoming episode, Bee is shown further taunting Filipinos (she called them Flips). "Supercallifragilisticexpialidocious! I totally misunderestimated your low self-esteem. You get piqued by such petty issues. "Get a life!" she said. The segment is titled "Are you ready to impeach your woman president?"

If you lose your sense of hunor, Bee said, I will stop eating Filipinos. (A brand of delectable Spanish cookies).

How safe is Manila Water?

2007-10-02T22:25:00.000+08:00

If you read the papers, and only those, you may never know. This is a dilemma which plagues consumers of many kinds of products. If one consumer has doubts about the quality of a product, it might happen that what she spends verifying product quality might not be worth it. She can spend time and effort and finally know that the product was sub-standard. Then what? The government regulatory agency might say that they would do something about it? In the meantime what?
In the past year or two, cancer survivor Pinky Tobiano has been publicizing results about water quality tests conducted on samples in Metro Manila. Initially, I was alarmed about the test results in regard to bacteria. But lately, after watching her on the show of Korina Sanchez, where results in regard to lead content were discussed, I was alarmed. How can this be happening?
In the mid nineties, I wrote a paper discussing the benefits and costs of eliminating the lead content in gasoline and the paper concluded that a well phased-out program in regard to lead in gasoline was beneficial. But water is a more essential product than gasoline and I ask myself why government could be so far behind in the regulation of lead in water.

If you are reading this and you have children, call me, even if I may not have the best advice. Somehow, I will, and can tell you how to direct your ire.

NBN: FG: How could I?

2007-10-02T21:42:00.000+08:00

Swamped by reporters at the airport yesterday, the gentleman asked rhetorically,
How could I, not knowing this guy, have told him to 'back off?' According to sources in the Philippine Onion, what the gentleman actually said was "Fuck off!" That we can believe, if we can also believe that the gentleman is a model of propriety and transparency and accountabilty in government. He was in suit and tie at the airport. But he might as well have been nakedly directing his non-lethal weapon at the mouth of, guess who? The former elections official. Stunning!

In otras palabras, what the gentle man said was, if you don't scratch my back, I will kick your ass.

Who will set limits on Sky?

2007-10-02T21:01:00.000+08:00

I recently read a news item that the dominant CATV company in the Philippines, Skycable, will replace the content of six channels starting next year. In an news report, the cable company's spokesman exhuded confidence that consumers would not switch to other providers because of the company's decision. What is the source of his confidence? Simple. As the dominant player in the field, the company just doesn't care. As far as I know, cable rates are not regulated and quality of service is not in their vocabulary. In the United States CATV rates are regulated in areas where there is no sufficient competition. But who is minding the store in regard to CATV? The simple answer: No one!

Earlier today, I visited the website of the National Telecommunications Commission and the only information that was returned in response to my queries were on potential regulations in regard to 'chatrooms' on cable channels.

In retrospect, I remember why I decided to subscribe to cable back in October or November of 2000, and that was because of Erap's impeachment trial. The coverage by the free networks were simply unsatisfactory. Also, that was also the time of the mesmerizing saga of the US elections, Gore vs. Bush and the related court battles. But at the time, Sky rates were nowhere near the clouds. Now, almost eight years later, there is not enough competition in CATV services, and we have to contend with the bad taste of the country's leading network.

One of the channels which will be axed starting next year is Jack tv, which carries The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, one of the best comedy shows providing incomparable international political commentary. One of the guests last week was Bolivia's Evo Morales, who showed Stewart the extent of his dumbness.

Our right to rate government: XXX

2007-10-02T20:43:00.000+08:00

Featured last week in The Big Picture were guests discussing the MTRCB rating of the documentary ‘Rights’ which should have been screened in time for the 35^th commemoration of Martial Law. The film, according to its producers (I have yet to see it) deals with recent human rights violations in the country. Kiri Dalena, one of the two in the first segment of the show, had to defend the intent of the film. In my book, she shouldn’t have had to. Movie-making is not journalism and is not bound by rules of fairness, because that is for viewers, with all their pre-dispositions, to judge. But in the next segment, A certain Erik F. Mallonga, who chaired the MTRCB’s second review committee for the film, sounded reasonable but the subtext of his message was: I have the power, and I deem the film not subversive at all, so let it be shown to the public above 13.

I must admit I was disappointed at the host Ricky Carandang who had kid gloves on, tolerating Mallonga’s power trip during the show. In his column in Manila Times Monday (October 1), the power-tripping censor states:

I found the documentary to be a finely crafted and aesthetically appealing 30-minute collage of human-rights violations; it was a riveting mix of actual video footages and dramatic reenactments on this subject matter. The First Review Committee ruled that the film’s scenes were allegedly “presented unfairly, one-sided, and undermines the faith and confidence in the government and duly constituted authorities, thus not for public exhibition.” As the filmmakers were absent during the first review, they forfeited the opportunity to defend or justify their position that “Rights” be given a “General Audience [G]” or “Parental Guidance [PG]” rating. The filmmakers came in full force during the second review...

What struck both filmmakers and the Second Review Committee members, however, was the earlier judgment that the film “undermines the faith and confidence in the government and duly constituted authorities.” We, in the Second Review Committee, honestly thought otherwise. There was nothing in the movie that called for a revolution, rebellion, overthrow, armed uprising or insurgency against the government. There was no incitement to sedition. There was no “clear and present danger” to the stability of the government that the military and police have to respond with armed might. (In contrast, the board found the Erap’s account of his overthrow seditious, and Mallonga did not elaborate further).

Mr. Mallonga, if you were not a censor, only one or two people would actually care for your opinion and since I don’t know you, I have no right to rate your intellect, especially in regard to evaluating artistic merit. But people like you, who pretend to know better than us viewers, in modern civilization, should have been kept in your mother’s womb, if it could still accept you.

There have been a number of ‘artists’ who have accepted posts in the MTRCB. They probably rationalized to themselves that “better me than them’ and you should be thankful “I’m more intelligent and liberal.” Sorry Mr. Mallonga, but I protest being one of your subjects. The right thing to do, for anyone who sees herself/himself as an intellectual, is to simply reject the nomination. You also do not appreciate that it is innately wrong for government to ban material on the basis that such might “ undermine faith in government.” If the public uses all its senses it might realize that government undermines faith in itself, in the most indecent ways.

If I were you Mr. Mallonga, find a more decent job, and let’s see if you deserve more than the minimum wage. Otherwise, I recommend that you seek the advise of Rep. Teddyboy Locsin on how to make yourself happy alone, and start to grow hair on the back of your palms.

NBN: Recurring themes in our nation's life

2007-09-30T22:18:00.000+08:00

I am surely not the only observer of the country's life who noticed that in the testimony of Romulo Neri before the Senate last week, he railed and ranted against the dominant role of the oligarchy in directing the life of the Filipino nation.
On the eve of his appearance before the Senate, I saw him on TV elaborating on a popular theme. Even if there was going to be another Edsa, nothing much would change. Another faction of the oligarchy would just defeat another and the poor among us would be where we were.
Neri's is a well-founded skepticism and I wish we had a dialogue with people like him more often. It might be unfortunate that his arguments sound eerily like those of Ferdinand Marcos in 1972. When Neri gave his testimony before the Senate, it was five days after the 35th commemoration of the declaration of martial rule in 1972. And in some conversations with friends, he had expressed his reservations about telling the truth, because his truth could be used by one faction of the oligarchy against another.
This is where the truth gets muddled. If you believe there is a truth out there which is independent of the oligarchy which funds research projects, you are welcome to elaborate your views. What do you think of the funding you get? And which part of the oligarchs in other countries might they come from?

Whistleblowing in the wind

2007-09-30T22:05:00.000+08:00

I have nothing more to say, said Romulo Neri over the weekend. The former NEDA director general and economic planning secretary is an outspoken fellow and it is his outspokenness which led him to disclose his discomfort on the NBN deal to his friends and acquaintances. His friends believed he would disclose all he knew given the right forum and if pressed hard enough.

Their belief was unfounded. For very often, in our day-to-day dealings with government officials, we hear complaints and stories of scandals and wrongdoing, and when we finally ask them whether they are ready to attest to such claims officially, they say no. I, for one, in the course of work in the energy and environment sectors, have heard many tall tales about the highest officials of the land. Unfortunately, my friends and acquaintances in government are willing whistleblowers only when they are whistleblowing in the wind.When the time comes for them to prove they have a backbone, they invariably ask, rhetorically, “You are willing to take care of my family?” Of course, what can I possibly say? And there are also more difficult questions, such as, “when I’m no longer around, who will give you the lowdown on what’s happening?” This last is a question I heard very recently in regard to procurement of fuel supplies. If you or I were in their place, what would we really do"? Could we be as sanctimonious?

Let me first get this out of the way. I am totally disgusted with some commentators who have taunted Romulo Neri about his personal life and preferences because of their disappointment over his behavior. While I can understand their frustration, that is no excuse for lack of decency in the struggle to get at the truth, or the closest approximation to it.

I understand the disappointment of Solita Monsod over Neri’s resort to ‘executive privilege’ over questions beyond his conversation with Comelec chair Benjamin Abalos. But she is most probably wrong in her assertion that he did his boss a disservice, especially if feeding us only the convenient truths was on her orders. After all, we all know that leaders can be myopic, and what we really don’t know is how myopic they can be.

Professors Emmanuel de Dios and Raul Fabella were more circumspect in their analysis, prefacing their paper with the perception of the president’s wish to leave a legacy and contrasting this with the reality of the obvious flaws of the NBN project. Their ciriticisms were also very constructive and could lead to genuine reforms through legislation.

Perhaps it was because of Fabella’s priestly airs and the appearance of de Dios as his willing acolyte that on Thursday last week, there was a palpable sense of a serious discussion going on between the Senate and the country’s respected academics. The senators seemed afraid to be exposed as ignorant boors before the guests. In the previous hearing, they had acted as boorish ignoramuses before hapless guests from the executive, even if that was because the executive did send its representatives to be slaughtered to save the boar, and maybe the bitch.

NBN: Negotiated Truths?

2007-09-27T06:04:00.000+08:00

They must find it difficult...

Those who have taken authority as the truth,

Rather than truth as the authority.

I find the quote above, attributed to Egyptologist G. Massey in Zeitgeist, appropriate as we ponder the difficulty confronting those seeking the truth on the National Broadband Network (NBN) scandal. I am often in heated debates with ‘post-modernist’ friends whose definition of truth is too relativistic for comfort. But even they, I hope, would agree that the truth we refer to here are more akin to facts and not some philosophically debated ‘scientific truths.’

In today’s Senate hearing, the resource persons will offer what to me is the most reasoned and sober appraisal on the need for the project itself. When the study of Emmanuel de Dios and Raul Fabella, dean and immediate past dean of the U.P. School of Economics respectively, first came out in the press, one of the immediate reactions from the spokesmen and other motley defenders of the project was, ‘how could they make any valid conclusions when they haven’t even read the contract?” And whose fault was that ? The thieves taunted the scholars: “how can you say we’ve stolen anything when you’ve never seen what we’ve stolen?” (Right after the publication, it was reported that the contracts had evaporated, but could be reconstituted, and perhaps even homogenized, lending credence to suspicions the project was really meant to be a milking cow). Elementary, there is/was something missing in the place it should be: plain and simple reason.

Executive secretary Eduardo Ermita insulted the scholars further as ‘never impartial.” He thus spoke as the authority with an unearned patent on the truth. Yesterday he was at pains explaining ‘executive privilege’ on how the truth could justifiably be withheld from us. who he must look down on as pious subjects, and just take his word for it. I can’t do that sir. Never.

Is the truth subject to negotiation?

In this case I hope not. The House Speaker and his son, and their president have been implicated, as are Comelec’s Abalos, DOTC’s Leandro Mendoza, and the gentle man. But from each their ability for candor and to each according to the degree of mitigation that candor justifies, to borrow loosely from my favorite philosopher.

How might the Speaker and his son twist the truth so as to explicate away the purported actions of the gentle man and his spouse? Simply, but in an incredible way. They can and might lead some to believe the portrait of the gentle man as the model of decency and propriety as painted by the gentle man’s lawyer. After all, JdVIII can always assert that he never attributed any motive to the FG’s words, so he has some room for maneuver there. He can as us to back off and many may unfortunately heed his admonition.

To the extent that their expectations of Romulo Neri were high in yesterday’s hearing, so did the frustrations of those who saw the controversy as just another chance to gain power have a potential to fall. Don’t misundertand me, I share the same passion for radiclal changes, but not the easy way.

They expected Neri to implicate the president and the gentle man unequivocably. As far as I’m concerned , if we activists for a better society had done our homework, that would have been enough to trigger large-scale demonstrations. Instead, the politically voyeuristic public has been and continues to be non-committal. Whose fault is that?

To be more blunt, I have observed that friends and acquaintances in the Left who are supposed to be guided by a more realistic theory of social change have been caught in a time warp of sorts, way back to the middle ages. They are prone to pin their hopes on heroes and have for the past decades, even portrayed social problems as a battle between good and evil. Where have they been these past few years?

If these friends find the time to dilligently read the paper by de Dios and Fabella, they would find that they could not pick the observations and conclusions just to support their own biases. The two scholars did provide the executive branch, leeway for a change of course and gave the president the benefit of the doubt. Granting that the facts will eventually support accusations of corruption? What then? That was the question posed by Neri on the eve of his Senate testimony.

I’ve met Neri only once, and that was last year, in a meeting of stakeholders in the power sector and in the presence of some foreign funders. (As I left the premises of a business organization based in Makati, the ambassador of a superpower came in). At the time I ‘challenged’ the view of Neri in regard to effecting immediate reforms in the power sector. While I agreed with his views on market power and more effective regulation, his ideas seemed to me to be hatched on another planet. Some other friends agree with me about his good intentions but question his technical competence, something he himself admits. Unfortunately for me, he saw me in that meeting as a minion instead of as an independent guest and resource person, and that is why I walked out and left with the impression of him as well-intentioned but not really competent.

We’re on Earth, aren’t we?

So what can and what should we reasonably expect from the Senate hearings?

From reading his columns and blogs and watching his TV program, I had the impression of Manolo Quezon as impartial and sober. But he was so incensed because of yesterday’s hearing, which, according to my scorecard, only one in four questions were relevant and helpful. Keep your cool Manolo, you’re doing us all a great service. But be cool.

At the very least, we expect the Senate to finally help resolve the question of executive privilege. If they can’t even resolve that question, they might as well just abandon the hearings for good.

September 23, 1972: incoherent memories

2007-09-24T05:19:00.000+08:00

September 23, 1972

It was a Saturday and I took two jeepney rides from Lawaan, Talisay to the U.P. Cebu campus in Lahug. I was excited because I had been chosen as one of two editors for the high school paper Tambuli, old vernacular for horn shell. There really might be no English equivalent, as with many words outside of English. Picked as a co-editor was my classmate Rita Murillo. It was supposed to be our first editorial meeting to discuss the launch of the paper and the articles for the first issue. I cannot now recall who else were chosen to staff the paper except Ella Rose Cabiluna and Rosendo Estoye.

Fe Reyes, the paper’s adviser, met us near the oblation to say we should all just go home because ‘martial law’ had been declared. It was the first time ever I had heard that phrase. A year earlier I had heard of ‘writ of habeas corpus.’ But in September of 1972, I was just seven months into my first year as a teenager.

I did not go straight home but instead went to my aunt and uncle’s bookshop (Paul's bookstore was the first after WWII in Cebu) at the time one of the top three book stores in Cebu. My aunt Fidela did not really know what had happened or what was happening. So she allowed me to hang out and browse while waiting for word from home. I don’t even remember where I had lunch that day but I do remember buying ‘My Name is Asher Lev’ by Chaim Potok for my older sister Josephine, who turned 17 two days earlier and who had planned on inviting her college sophomore classmates to the house for a celebration that Saturday. There was a another bookshop near the jeepney terminal, and I spent some more time there because it was in a block we called ‘Lane’ and I recall having been home that night in time to see the official broadcast with the president who said he had declared a state of emergency to save the country from all sorts of trouble makers.

The remainder of the year and the following were eventful to say the least. The crisis in the Middle East, including the Munich hostage crisis and the Yom Kippur War. As a junior in high school I chose Yom Kippur as the subject of my English class baby thesis and it had to go through an oral defense when I was fourteen.

But before that I had had a lot to read, and many of the books I didn’t really understand (Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984, Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, ... I tried but at the time there really wasn’t much to do aside from brood and since I wasn’t ‘normal’ in terms of being a boy chasing girls, I was in the library often. And when I wasn’t in the library I was in the faculty room. I don’t know why my teachers allowed me in there to have coffee with and even smoke with them, even after the edicts on short hair, and the subsequent youth civic action program (YCAP) and citizens army training (CAT) had been imposed.

After graduation from high school, my values had pretty well been shaped. I was an atheist even before I called myself Marxist. I was first associated with the group of the Maoist party in Cebu before I joined the old communist party (PKP) in 1977 or 1978. In 1990 the PKP expelled me after I ahd spoken out at a forum challenging the scientific nature of historical and dialectical materialism.

Now after 35 years, I feel just slightly older than I was in 1972. Old comrades have moved on with their families and careers. They may have perfected the art of forgetting and surviving. I wake up and still ask myself the same questions, perhaps more calmly now, but still the adolescent I was on September 23 35 years ago.

JdVIII on taking the high road

2007-09-21T08:28:00.000+08:00

If there is anything which has so far diminished the credibility of the father's son, it must be his claim that 'experimenting with marijuana and beer' was a mistake, especially while doing that in Boston, where some geniuses are self-reliant and reportedly grow the best weed in the world in their own dorms.

I have heard a lot of anecdotes about the humility and simplicity of the first and only daughter of her mother, but her stupid insinuation that JdVIII's recklessness might be due to Jane takes and beats the brownie. Have the accusations come too close to home that she has to strike below the belt? Is her unaffected demeanor denial of the lowest kind? My unsolicited proposal is: try it, and she may yet giggle and finally see what scum she came from.

As for JdVIII, all I can say is that he may not have inhaled deep enough. Experiment some more man!

NBN: Back-off-the-envelop estimates?

2007-09-20T21:56:00.000+08:00

If this DOTC presentation at the Senate hearing on the NBN-ZTE-BA-FG deal was meant to explain to and convince taxpayers that it is beneficial and aboveboard, it failed miserably. What we have here is a table which purports to compare simply specifications and costs of three proposals/proponents. Because the specifications are different, what DOTC assistant secretary Formoso did was to 'extrapolate' unit costs to estimate the equivalent total costs for both Amsterdam Holdings and Arescom using the specs offered by ZTE as the baseline. (How in hell did he do this in multiple dimensions?) Apparently, all three proposals were unsolicited. The following questions immediately arise:

If the project had been a priority since 2000 after the passage of the e-commerce law, why didn't government have any list of minimum requirements? Such a bill of specifications would allow us to appreciate the general and specific needs for a national broadband network, and led to a more transparent and publicized invitation for courtship?
If we grant that at some point the ZTE-PROC executive agreement/tied loan possibility became too beautiful to resist, why didn't the DOTC and NEDA-ICC give the other proponents a chance to modify their own proposals or offered costs?
Why did Malacanang (PGMA) and when did it "back off" from the initial desiderata (BOT without take-or-pay, no guarantees...) officially articulated by JdVIII's president?

I have an open mind about whether a fundamental service should be provided by government or the private sector, although in the past I had an ideological bias against the latter. It is a matter of incentives, after all. But what strikes me about the Formoso presentation is the lack of rigor and detail in regard to project benefits. His oral testimony referred to cost savings (and I will not get into that for lack of reliable data) but not to any valuation of benefits.

Why is it so important for government to have its own network? And what is the difference in value between using private and self provision? Can they quantify or monetize the value of enhanced (but still imperfect) security?
More importantly, do the DOTC and the NEDA have an estimate of the value of improved communication among and between government agencies at different levels?

Unfortunately, what the hearings yesterday unintentionally demonstrated was government (executive) instrumentalities was that even with low-tech methods, they don't communicate. They have no common appreciation of the relevant laws and not even prescribed executive procedures.

Information, Democracy, Communication

DOTC Secretary Leandro Mendoza adverted to his background in 'intelligence' and proceeded to contradict himself with his subsequent responses. Could he not be aware that under his watch that his very own agency is among the least communicative ( to the people) and the most corrupt?

If we have to prioritize the information and communication problems that should be addressed, there are many, unfortunately, and these don't really require much expense or commissions. It is a matter of culture. In many cases, such as in the communications and energy bureaucracy, there are debilitating turf wars. Why? Your guess is very good.

Okay, let's grant that the private providers have limitations. But these have not yet even been breached! I would have asked Formoso for evidence that a public servant from a 6th class municipality in Mindanao wrote to someone in the central government (maybe the president) to complain of inaction. I bet the bottleneck is not in the medium but in the message and the way it is formulated.

Mam, I am a lowly farmer wanting to use a plot for biofuels and I seek advise on how I may and can avail of govenrment help, if any.

Culture and communication

Just visit the websites maintained by government ( three levels) and you are very likely to agree that the problem is not hardware but software (including the processes in the brains of public servants). Government officials who have e-mail addresses don't even read much less answer electronic mail! Yes of course they have minions to do that. But these minions are not empowered and are just like the customer service staff of private providers and worse. They get paid anyway, regardless of how they deal with the public.

So why not e-mail?

Using currently available technology but under a much-improved culture of transparency and responsiveness, a lot can be accomplished to improve government services. And there would be an electronic trail, especially with commercial media. The problem with the NBN, even if it may have a few merits, is that it would only reinforce biases of a government so secretive but still so incompetent, it doesn't know how to talk to minions and other branches. But this can serve loyalists or minions, and a dictatorship and what it means is what we are all supposed to remember on Sunday.

If you ask me, the more pressing need is for government to communicate to you and me. The only reason they need a dedicated and secure network is because they want to screw us, secretly. Secretary Mendoza appeared before the Senate yesterday, but only to defend the FG. And, even if I had a colony of ants to bite his scrotum, I'm afraid they would rather go to Mars than wait for him to tell the truth.

Sex, lies, and Abalos or Just another day for the Chairman

2007-09-18T18:22:00.000+08:00

And death threats and wiretaps. What else could be added to this brew?

Today has been just another day for Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos, who reportedly reported for work to preside over election dispute hearings, presumably after his routine at the golf course. Undaunted by what we consider the explosive testimony of Jose de Venecia III at the Senate, the chairman, after emerging from the hearings, simply reiterated his blanket denials and would not speculate on what could be motivating JdVIII and the columnist Jarius Bondoc. Unlike DOTC Secretary Leandro Mendoza, who called the 'rantings' fairy tales of a 'losing bidder' (what bidding?). The sons of the FG, meanwhile, called the testimony 'black propaganda,' but did not explain why the son of the House speaker would risk prosecution and his and his father's future.

If you are a well-meaning and upright citizen hoping to shame the chairman into resignation, or worse, into suicide, yours is a losing battle. The reason Abalos comports himself the way he does is his confidence he will go down only with the rest of the boys, and girls, and the school marm who are at the very core of our society's power structure. If we were a functioning democracy, JdVIII's revelations alone would have been enough to trigger a wave of resignations and immediate indictments. But it is not, and, depending on the appreciation of the silent majority, our society can either implode , or revert to business as usual (BAU) mode. If the former, we risk manipulation by forces just as insidious and unethical as those they want to replace, especially in the absence of a democratic mass movement strong enough to take the reins. But that is still a better option than BAU, whose rottenness and workings JdVIII may have unwittingly exposed.

First, look at Abalos's disingenuous protestations. On the alleged sexcapades in Shenzen: my sexual prowess is myth. On his alleged power-brokering or 'commissioning' : who am I to wield such influence? I can attest to the chairman's integrity, to the effect that he, in hell, would rather consult his lawyers rather than his conscience, and this guy could swindle the devil himself as long as he could get away with it.

Second, take the narration of JdVIII at face value and appreciate that the guy has exposed his own culpability under our graft and corruption laws. But more important to me is the value of his own account of the way deals are made in this country.

Would the proposal of his company have been taken seriously if he were not the son of his father?
Would he have had access to high officials, the DOTC and Finance secretaries? Why would the DOTC secretary arrange a reconciliation meeting between two entities unless the secretary considered them part of the boys' network?
His testimony also implied that his President knew of Abalos's brokering efforts and of his own proposal.

Now look at why Abalos apparently failed to, excuse my language, cover his ass with a cover story underpinned by 'plausible deniability?' Simply because he considered the young man and the father part of the 'old boys.'

In recent weeks, acquaintances in the energy sector have reported that their colleagues have admitted regularly delivering millions to the mystery man from procurement deals. I can only hope that at some point they find their balls and free themselves from this vicious circle or cycle.

And what of Romulo Neri? I was in a meeting with him last year with stakeholders of a foreign-funded project. I was initially turned off because he admitted to me that some columnists were in his payroll but this was mitigated by his independent attitude toward power sector regulation. I just hope he will surface and stand for his convictions, if any remain. I know that he has always been a player. In the next few days, we will know the game he has chosen.

And what about my favorite morally challenged senator? During the impeachment hearings in 2000, she questioned the testimony of a UP law graduate, insinuating that Ms. Banal's behavior was questionable because it was unlike her own documented opportunism. Yesterday, she questioned JdVIII's integrity on the same grounds. You want her to commit hara kiri. Chew your fingers.

In haste, Sandiganbayan jiustices forgot death penalty had been abolished

2007-09-12T10:39:00.000+08:00

Just over an hour ago, the verdict in the plunder and perjury trial of former President Joseph Estrada was read, and the most telling sign of haste was that the justices forgot the death penalty had been abolished. The clerk of court said:

...the penalty for (plunder) is a minimum of reclusion perpetua and a maximum of death. But there having been no mitigating nor aggravating circumstances, the minimum of the two is hereby imposed...

None of the anchors of the ANC, nor the legal experts in the studio notice the egregious error. Neither did the former president's lawyers advert to this in their immediate reactions to media.

Biofuels and cow fart

2007-09-10T01:55:00.000+08:00

Finally, here is a sobering study by experts from the College of Agriculture of U.P. Los Banos on the technical and economic prospects of jathropa, hyped to be a boon not just for local farmers, the environment, and for the ill-advised policy goal of energy self-reliance. Professors Ted Mendoza, Oscar Zamora and Joven Lales are in the crop science faculty of the agriculture college, and one would expect them to jump on the bandwagon of biofuels consultancy if they were so inclined. My only beef is, they should have spoken up much earlier. Because they didn’t, we have had to contend with a lot of cow fart from government.

Humble enough to admit what they have not studied, they proceed to illustrate why government claims about extra-ordinary profitability for farmers planting jathropa don’t stand closer scrutiny. They say, essentially, that with the most optimistic assumptions, the claims of government stink. But read the report for yourself.

Environmental activists are right to demand that government study options for energy supply now and in the future, but they should also remain vigilant and identify hype. In my case, I still have not wiped off all the egg off my face in regard to natural gas vehicles, promised by government to have been operational in 2005. In December 2004, using data from government, I made a presentation in Agra, India optimistic about the economic viability and positive environmental impacts of the program, to an enthusiastic audience. Three years later, the program has yet to materialize because of hitches in infrastructure and financial and economic problems with the supplier of LNG. Other participants in the Better Air Quality (BAQ) conference joked that I was taking my paper too seriously, because I did not even find time to visit the Taj Majal.

A brief historical review should make us wary of astounding claims on alternative fuels. In 1982, at the height of the Marcos government’s alcogas program, which entailed the blending of anhydrous alcohol with regular and premium gasoline, I was making the rounds in Negros and Panay trying to address the problems of water intrusion into the gas station tanks and engine incompatibility. At the time I was disgusted to find out that the sugar planters, for whom the project was meant to help, were among the most stubborn oppositors.

The program was heavily subsidized for their benefit. I remember I and my colleagues driving around Iloilo City and Bacolod at night and being offered child prostitutes for about P2 a piece because of the slump in world sugar prices. One would think that in these times, government would be studying not only the technical aspects of the biofuels program but also the equity implications. I will leave that for another post.

Corrruption and inefficiency in Philippine Rural Electric Cooperatives

2007-09-08T18:39:00.000+08:00

The conventional wisdom is that the major reason for inefficiency and corruption in rural electric cooperatives in the Philippines is the lack of incentives for good management. Because there is no group of private stakeholders large enough to care how an REC (rural electric cooperative) performs, the managers are left to their own devices, especially if their pay is not linked to such performance. While the coop members elect the boards of directors which in turn supervise the managers, that is pretty much where their participation ends, which is why it has been said that the RECs are cooperatives only in name.

REC elections are also said to be well-contested because the boards exercise tremendous political power; in some cases even more so than local government elections. In fact, the party-list party of the rural coops, APEC, has always been a top vote-getter in national elections owing to a large bloc of ‘command votes.’

Occasionally a group of members might have enough community spirit to exercise vigilance over management while the rest of the members simply ‘free-ride’ on their efforts. This is also why the standard (and perhaps even dogmatic) prescription is to encourage the entry of private capital imbued with a profit motive to lower costs. But that is just one solution to enforce greater accountability and efficiency, by encouraging greater membership participation.

This is what this account of graft and corruption in BATELEC II (Batangas Electric Cooperative II) illustrates: member vigilance and heroic management. The board, elected in 2003, is facing charges of corruption brought by some members (in 2005) for approving and awarding a P75 million computerization contract to I-Solv, a company based in Metro Manila, with a paid-up capital of P62,500 and organized just a few days before the contract award in April 2004.
The graft charges were presumably lodged after the National Electrification Administration (NEA) audit, at the instance of the same group of members, found the whole project irregular for lack of the proper technical study and bidding. Furthermore, the board had usurped the authority of the bids and awards committee, the audit said. It also found that the board approved a 100% overprice of 10 boom trucks. In this controversy, general manager Marlyn Caguimbal has been on the side of the members.

It is unfortunate that PDI reporter Marlon Ramos ends his account with developments way back in 2005 and thus leaves us wondering on the status of the case and what other actions, if any, the NEA has taken against the board.

About nine years ago, I had occasion to visit the offices of BATELEC I, the other REC serving Batangas, and was impressed by the professionalism of management. The REC had been chosen for a brief historical case study, excerpted in a chapter of The Challenge of Rural Electrification, Strategies for Developing Countries, edited by Douglas Barnes and recently published in May by Resources for the Future (RFF) and Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP). I co-wrote the chapter on the Philippines “Power and Politics in the Philippines” with Gerald Foley.

Taxi strike: unfare?

2007-09-08T01:18:00.000+08:00

Philippine taxi drivers are generally a friendly lot, though there are many horror stories associated with rogue drivers who reject fare, short-change passengers, collude with robbers, and eject customers midway through trips. (The last shows cab drivers know their economics and the value of time, because some would even give up the registered fare simply because going further would result in a loss---in other words, they think in terms of 'net incremental benefit.'

They are are also a bit talkative and need little provocation to lecture you on politics and philosophy, and many of them in their 60's would still even hark to the 'good old days' of Marcos and the period of discipline and (false) sense of national purpose. With a little provocation they'll even tell you whom they voted for in elections and subtly try to sway you to their position. I have always used their stories as a vane to give me a sense of the social weather. In one unforgettable ride not too long ago, a driver, having eavesdropped on my conversation on politics with a friend, butted in politely and eventually confessed he was an 'intelligence agent' of the armed forces. No, his cab driving was not a front but genuine moonlighting, though that was not really reassuring. And cell phones were not affordable then. In fact, at about the same time in 1995, I was amazed that my cabbie in HK handed me his handset to call a friend to ask for directions. And no, his name was not Vidal Doble.

Once, in my early 30's, I was mistaken by a cabbie as of his age. After I complained about the metallic rock on his radio, he gently reminded me that things were a lot different in 'our time.' I didn't protest that because I had much earlier accepted having been born old and grumpy. But then, in another ride, while I was waiting for change, this young driver insisted he recognized me as a lead member of a local rock band.

I don't know the status of renewed efforts to finally enforce the requirement in the tax code (circa post-Marcos 80's) that cabs should issue receipts to passengers as part of enhanced tax-revenue generation. I guess government has balked again. I agree with the measure but recognize government has to be fair to both cab companies and drivers but fairer to drivers and to passengers. Clearly there is a lot of room for improved regulation of behavior. The economic fact is that drivers merely respond to the so-called incentive structure of the system, like free 'profit-maximizing' agents who take all the demand risk, because they pay a fixed rent regardless of kilometers travelled or fare volume. Bus drivers, on the other hand, get a share of revenues. But in congested thoroughfares, the resulting behavior results in disastrous consequences for both passengers and air quality (I digress too much, as usual).

I travel fairly often and fairly wide and know that Philippine taxi rates are among the cheaper in the world, and have spent large sums because of my habitual laziness and addiction to door-to-door delivery. An absolute increase in fares resulting from regulation might do a lot of good all around, most of all by encouraging more mass transit patronage. With some caveats, mainly for people like myself, who, as a lazy patron, also use cab drivers to attend to other addictions. When I was a beer-drinker and smoker, and whether alone or with guests, but as lone occupant in a single male-headed household, I would call the nearest cab company to request delivery of beer and cigarets.

Do cabbies generally overcharge? I don't think so. Rates are much higher in areas where entry is either regulated or banned, especially airports. That is because the entry regulator is usually corrupt but justify the regulation as part of ensuring passenger safety. Hell, they could do that by simply charging a parking fee and enforcing a monitoring system.

Without much ado, local cab companies have been shifting to alternative fuels like liquefied petroleum gas (there is an LPG filling station just a few hundred meters from where I live) because it makes financial sense. It also results in less harmful emissions.

This brings me to the implications of this news article from the New York Times, New York Taxi Strike:

Fare increases in 2004 and 2005 — totaling some 25 percent — were contingent on taxi owners installing global positioning systems and credit-card machines. Drivers were desperate for the increase — the first in eight years — and accepted the terms. That was the deal they made, and they should stick to it. The city had an equal obligation to make sure the mandated technology is functional, up-to-date and serves both driver and passenger. So far, the results are not encouraging.

It is not surprising they are talking about GPS and credit card payments while we are arguing about receipts. After all, we are in the Philippines. But our level of economic development, I should say, does not really indicate our comparative level of civility.

Unimpeachable?

2007-09-07T00:37:00.001+08:00

On the contrary, they are impeachable. In the case of George W. Bush, a strong case could have been made much earlier, and as more evidence comes to light, his term shortens and the Democrats are finding it ever harder to remember where they misplaced their balls. This new revelation Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction only adds to the frustration.

In the case of Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines, many would support impeachment only if they were guaranteed a better result, in the short run. Pragmatism wins over principle, especially if one uses a high social discount rate (or holding the present more valuable than the future). The main argument for conservatism and economic policy continuity is the lack of credibility among the opposition, with its fair share of shady characters.

Now that the 'Hello Garci' wiretaps and election cheating investigations are being reincarnated, all the opposition can muster is a case for impeachment against the elections chief commissioner, on an entirely unrelated case. One led by an alleged human rights abuser with unexplained wealth, and the other, someone who had admitted to influence peddling for the sake of his wife's business.

Electricity and Philippine Growth: amateur detective work

2007-09-03T06:40:00.001+08:00

I can understand why the recent GDP growth figure of 7.5% has elicited a lot of skepticism and hostile criticism , and most of the justification has to do with the fact that even the middle class, especially in Metro Manila don’t feel better off compared to last year.

Let me first disclose that I am confident about the professionalism and integrity of the people who compile and estimate the growth statistics. I have worked for long periods with NEDA assistant director general Estrella Domingo, mainly in the nineties, and mostly in regard to estimating the environmental impacts of growth. She and her people are competent and open to criticism and suggestions, especially in regard to methods.

First let us grant that the statistics are correct. The natural questions to ask are where did the growth come from, which sectors and which regions?

Growth in electricity consumption

My preferred method of validating economic growth figures is through looking at electricity consumption. So I examined the sales figures of Meralco for the first semesters of last year and this year. The second row of the following table shows percentage growth in kilowatt-hour consumption by customer class. The Meralco service area comprises about 60 percent of value added (GDP) in the Philippine economy.

Residential	Commercial	Industrial	C+I	Others	Total
3.02	5.78	3.59	4.83	-1.80	4.18

From the figures above, here are my initial observations, not necessarily in order of importance:

The NSCB claims growth is consumption-led. Clearly growth in residential consumption is much less than overall growth, and is also less than growth in personal consumption expenditures of nine (9) %.. Thus the elasticity of demand for household electricity is less than 1 (0.33), which means an additional peso of income creates much less demand for electricity in the Meralco area. This could be higher in areas outside MM (AOMM)., which is intuitive because these areas are starting with less electricity consuming appliances.

But looking at C+I in electricity consumption in Metro Manila, which is much less than growth in the value added of the service and industrial sectors (8%) per NSCB nationwide, I can only surmise that growth in these sectors must be happening in AOMM. Unfortunately, the NSCB does not provide a spatial disaggregation of value added and growth. But this is the most likely explanation I can find.
If we assume that GDP growth in Metro Manila is the same for the rest of the country, it would mean that the elasticity of demand for electricity overall with respect to GDP growth would be .56, which is contrary to historical experience and incredible.

From the above, if we assume the NSCB figures are correct, these can only be explained by higher growth in AOMM.

To whom is credit due?

Here I will allow myself some political bias, which you might agree is justified. The effects of policy always come with a lag, and it would be fungus-faced (to quote my favorite senator) for the Arroyo administration to claim credit for the growth figures. It is probable that phenomenal growth occured inspite of its incompetence and erratic responses to threats of its survival. One thing I can concede, without offering empirical proof, is that the value added tax did and does lead to a higher growth trajectory.

Equity and skepticism

Among the more reasoned essays with respect to equity and healthy skepticism published in cyberspace recently are those of Ricky Carandang and Manolo Quezon.

On the matter of equity, the Central Bank used to publish a disaggregation of GDP into returns to capital and labor but it stopped doing this sometime in the 1980’s. A simple way of ascertaining whether growth is equity-enhancing would be compute the growth in the ratio of labor's share per capita (simply divide the labor share of value added by population growth). Unfortunately I have no method to estimate this, though I suspect that if domestic demand is fueled by OFW income, growth, and if consumption growth accrues to sectors in the economy with market power, growth might be inequality enhancing. Note that I am not sure about this.

For those interested in the structure of the economy and the growth figures click here. The NSCB has one of the better government sites, but please write the webmaster and demand that it present data files in downloadable format.

wiretaps in aid of effective electricity spot market regulation

2007-09-02T03:43:00.000+08:00

A funny thing happened on the way to a competitive electricity market in the Philippines.

Let me start again. A funny thing happened when the electricity regulator was investigating anti-competitive behavior of the state-owned utility. The regulator said there was no prima facie case even after the market operator furnished them with affidavits admitting such behavior. This is one for the books, but not surprisingly because the country lacks a history of anti-trust litigation.

Let me start again. In September last year, the Philippine Electricity Marketing Corporation (PEMC) lodged a case with the ERC accusing the PSALM of market manipulation. The investigator of the ERC did not even have to call Jack Bauer of CTU. The affidavits of the PSALM agents are clear that they bid to get a desired price.

Then the ERC dismissed the case for lack of prima facie evidence.

It seems like the ERC was looking for legally wiretapped conversations which could have gone this way.

Hey Juan, at the peak demand, we should tweak our bids this way and that.

Unfortunately for consumers, ERC was not forward-looking enough to install bugging devices in the rooms of PSALM and the ERC or NPC. What a pity.

So the spot market celebrated its first anniversary in the first week of August without fanfare because PSALM was demanding a to collect P9 billion, the difference between spot rates and administered prices imposed by PEMC for two months last year.

If you read the ERC decision you'll know that the investigator didn't need to call Jack Bauer of CTU because the PSALM affidavits were quite candid and in themselves incriminatory.

Long live Jose Maria Sison!

2007-08-29T05:53:00.000+08:00

I am always ambivalent every time I hear any news about this guy's continuing persecution, which only serves to fuel his revolutionary delusions. In fact, one of my favorite conspiracy theories is that Sison's closet allies in the Philippines is national security adviser Norberto Gonzales, who has done more than his fair share in making Sison and his comrades more important than they really are.
Well, if justice has to be done, let it take its course, though I support the hypothesis of Joel Rocamora that the cause of Sison and his comrades still shines only because of the slow speed of light. People might be seeing light from a dying star, but because of the delay, what appears bright is already actually dead. But this phenomenon is not unique to the dead Maoist cause.
One other favorite conspiracy theory is that Sison became a celebrated 'revolutionary' in the Philippines primarily because of the help of the Central Intelligence Agency and Benigno Aquino Jr.

All I'm sure of is Joma Sison must be celebrating this most recent episode of 'persecution.' The first and last time I ever talked to this guy, he was lying though his teeth about the history of the revolutionary movement in the Philippines.

Norwegian Would: Barbara Goldoftas's book on Ecological Decline in the Philippines now available locally

2007-08-24T02:17:00.000+08:00

Norwegian Would: Barbara Goldoftas's book on Ecological Decline in the Philippines now available locally

The continuing decline of energy sector institutions

2007-08-24T01:14:00.000+08:00

Just had dinner with a reliable newly elected congressman who quoted other neophytes requesting anonymity in aid of obscurity. The buzz in the House is that the unpalatable Michael Defensor is being groomed to be energy secretary. From good to acceptable to bad to worse. What say you?

Being clear on going nuclear

2007-08-20T22:22:00.000+08:00

I would not worry too much about reported plans by the energy department, with the imprimatur of the president, to 'study the possibility' of harnessing nuclear power in the country. There is no lack of things to worry about in this world, and there is no dearth of interesting subjects to study either. For all I care, Secretary Reyes can study nuclear physics and rocket science, but on unofficial time. I will start worrying when he gets distracted from the more important tasks of introducing real competition and lowering rates in the power sector and achieving the goals of the rural electrification program.
While I keep an open mind on nuclear power, especially as a potential solution to the risks of global warming, this is a non-starter for the Philippines, where the justifiable knee-jerk rejection of nuclear power is informed by the intertwined issues of corruption and safety.
It came to pass without much ado that the foreign debt of more than $ 2 billion incurred under clearly fraudulent conditions for the Bataan nuclear plant was finally fully paid in April this year. While many in legal circles felt we had a strong case against the Marcos henchman Disini and the supplier, Westinghouse, the Aquino administration had opted to settle out of court with the latter for a meager $25 million worth of old turbines. I don't know what happened to Disini. The Aquino administration also opted to honor the obligation but transferred it from the books of the National Power Corporation to the national account. (Just think how much higher NPC rates would have been if the white elephant had been part of utility's rate base. To its credit, NPC has at least managed to generate some income from the Morong complex by operating a hotel and cabanas---respectable houses meant for the power plant staff--- open to the public for conferences and private breaks. I've tried fishing by the wharf there and snagged some poisonous fish--- no not from any nuclear contamination because no fuel rods were ever stored there. There is also a good firing range for target shooting). Aquino officials shuddered at the thought of triggering cross-default provisions, used to shield banks from the consequences of their bad decisions---sound familiar?---- and lengthy litigation, had they chosen a more militant stance.
That same fear also probably was behind the attitude of the committee tasked to review the contracts with the independent power producers. From the very beginning, it chose a non-confrontational stance. But I've digressed enough.
Perhaps, Secretary Angelo Reyes was misquoted in this reportage on his view that nuclear power would help decrease power rates. A recent Economist article argues this hope rests on shaky ground. I'm all for nuclear power, but for Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand. Let them, as long as that decision has popular consent. On safety and sustainability, he can be guided by this real expert. Also, what to do with spent fuel and the risks of nuclear proliferation remain unresolved.
Notwithstanding Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the fears evoked by current difficulties in that Japan nuclear plant undergoing repair after an earthquake, many risk assessment experts would probably tell you that Filipinos living around a nuclear plant would have a greater chance of dying from a motor accident (getting hit by a tricycle?), a fall resulting from a carelessly thrown banana peel, or from the bullets of political hitmen than from a nuclear plant failure. But subjective risk perceptions are always part of objective reality and that is where the main problem is. Moreover, it will probably take us at least fifty years to resolve the issue of safety in this country, where many controversies one hopes could be resolved by hard science never seem to be. (For lack of resources and intellectual boldness, neither the department of energy nor of science and technology could even come to a simple judgment on some alleged fuel-saving automotive gadgets that a former environment secretary had installed in his department's vehicles).
But what is there to study anyway? The energy secretary must of course appreciate that we are not at the forefront of nuclear research and would thus have to depend on technological advances from abroad. He wants a technical pool? For what and at whose expense? Most of the people sent by NPC to train for nuclear plant operations opted to remain in the United States, and my acquaintances who came back formed part of NPC's brain trust, mainly in desk jobs in planning and in environmental work, and are now in the private sector after the utility's downsizing.
As far as I know there is no legal prohibition against putting up a nuclear plant in the country, but the proponent would have to pass the difficult environmental and social hurdles. Identifying potential sites? Okay. We can always let local governments with suitable sites volunteer and take care of the problem of social consent. Cebu? Just kidding. Unless of course one option under study is for government to get back into the business of generation, which some would consider foolish.
Finally, on climate change, we should not worry about that too much either, not in the sense of spending our meager resources. Our climate change policy should be anchored on the fact that historically and currently, we are a very minor source of so-called greenhouse gases. To the extent that we are almost certain to suffer from hotter average temperatures, our national policy should be one of seeking justice and compensation from the culprits, the developed countries responsible for the accumulation of these gases. We should adopt policies encouraging less GHG emissions, sure, but not at the expense of the poor and more important priorities. For one, we can tax, to the extent possible, the energy consumption of the rich.
Okay, let's be open, and just leave it at that.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer's recycling advocacy is probably garbage

2007-08-19T01:55:00.000+08:00

“Every issue of the Inquirer is already made from 100% recycled paper. But if every reader recycled their (sic) newspapers for one year, we would all save an additional 3.4 million trees, 840 million kilowatthours of energy, and 78
million gallons of oil. Support the PDI NewPaper Drive and help save the environment ...”

The recycling advocacy of the Philippine Daily Inquirer is admirable, but the claim above is mind-boggling and incredible. In what follows I’ll just leave the claim about trees saved to stand.
I did some back-of-the envelop calculations and came out with an estimate of a combined national hardcopy daily newspaper circulation of 6.6 million, assuming the Inquirer assumed its drive would include the recovery of old editions of its rivals. Otherwise, the circulation estimate would be bloated by a factor equal to the reciprocal of its market share. I also estimated that each copy of PDI weighed 200 grams, but even if we grant that that weight is a kilogram, that would still imply a daily circulation of 1.32 million.
(Reliable newspaper circulation numbers are hard to come by because ironically, the principles of transparency and the public’s right to know are not shared by the business and advertising departments of newspapers. The Philippines is one of a few Southeast Asian countries for which newspaper circulation data are missing by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization).
The electricity savings is already about two percent of generation in the whole of Luzon, and at spot prices prevailing in the WESM, would be worth about P4 billion. So, at this point, I will not even question the claim of the volume of oil saved except to say that at prevailing world prices, that would add another P6 billion in putative savings.
The proper way to estimate energy savings from recycling is to subtract energy consumption with recycling from a base case (meaning transporting old newspapers to a landfill and production of newsprint from trees. For the curious and/or technically inclined, try following this reference.
Aggravating the exaggeration of the claims of the Inquirer, and more unforgivably at that, is the assumption that no old newspapers are being recycled. (If it did, the circulation figures above would again be bloated by another factor). In the United States, the rate of newspaper recycling is around 82% and I dare say that in a poorer country such as ours, the rate would be higher. If you don’t know the schedules of your friendly neighborhood ambulant BDP’s (Bote, Diario, Papel) entrepreneurs, you must be living in Forbes or Dasma. My best guess is that the savings from any newspaper recycling drive such as the Inquirer’s would be much less than 10% of the figures cited above. In my case, all newsprint is sold to vendors by the neighborhood diner (the owners of the diner are friends of the Inquirer’s readers’ advocate) I donate newspapers to after breakfast coffee, except for the crumpled ones I use to wipe grease off dishes and kitchen implements, as absorbent for the occasional water intrusions on my bedroom floor after storms, and to clean glass. I can also safely assume that newsprint not ending up recycled would be re-used as wrappers of choice for bulad and tapa in your friendly neighborhood talipapa. In the latter, the Bulletin trumps the Inquirer hands down. I don’t know why. A secret ingredient from the ink supplier?

But 10% of a billion pesos is still a lot, right? But to whom will these savings accrue? Is the waste collection system competitive? Three years ago I worked for a project with a paper manufacturing facility in Luzon and observed so many layers of middle men enroute to supplying the plant with scrap paper, and that’s one of the reasons I’m able to come up with the estimates above. The spouse of my masseuse was in the garbage business in Antipolo and he had to give it up because of the competitiveness of supply going against the monopsony of the buyers.
It may be that the Inquirer drive will benefit impoverished folk targetted as beneficiaries. But it can actually do better. It can radically change its business model and encourage more readership by scrapping its archaic and unenforceable links policy, and thereby reduce the use of newsprint at source. This commentator, for instance, explains resistance to the net forcefully.

And, if you happen to be like me, sentimentally retarded and insisting on reading the news while sipping coffee, find a cost-effective way to access news in cyberspace.
(I’m still trying to muster the heart to tell the old man who has delivered the Inquirer to my doorstep the past 15 years that I have finally discarded old habits).
A final note: Worthy advocacies often lose credibility by the exaggeration of the advocates. This is obviously one of those. To recycle an old economics argument, allow me to say that if it pays for them to do something, reasonable people generally do it. Except if they read Bulletin Today.

P.S. To those interested in my calculations, the spreadsheet file will be mailed on request.

Mikey Arroyo's thin line on energy

2007-08-17T22:46:00.000+08:00

I have no idea where he came from, but he has a lucky mother. But when I saw him on ANC last night saying there was a thin line between the independence of the Energy Regulatory Commission and the wishes (populist and manipulative) of the executive, I was alarmed. Rep. Mikey Arroyo, chair and lone member of the House energy committee, at first seemed cautious, until the interviewers got the better of him. And that was when he not only betrayed his ignorance (forgivable) and then his political tendencies (unforgivable).
Most every observer of the Philippine energy sector would agree that one of the main problems of sector regulation is the lack of transparency aggravated by the discretionary powers of the regulator, complexed with the political influence of whoever wields executive power. Sometimes, this weakness is utilized by all sorts of contending political factions (including, unfortunately, those from the Left and who should know better).
The independence of the regulatory bodies in the sector has seen some ups and downs in the close to three decades I've been in it, as an active participant and observer. I must say we might be hitting anothe new low.
Less power to you, Mikey Arroyo.

p.s. My favorite senator and neighbor, who went epileptic with the appointment of Angelo Reyes as energy secretary, must be baying at the moon.

Bull, Ron Nathan, Run?

2007-08-17T01:56:00.000+08:00

The stock market analyst of the Inquirer claims he made the right call for his clients and Inquirer readers a few weeks back. Maybe, but who is to say, especially if he doesn't publish the wrong calls he made for his clients, who've been paying a fixed fee for his advice?
Let me be kind. Can Mr. Nathan honestly tell us he has made money for his clients in the last two months,on average, and how much. He may have articulated some warnings but also still managed to hype some stocks (especially mining)? It probably is not his fault, but that of a system where so-called investment advisors don't really face the same risks and rewards as their clients do. Thus their risk-aversion is not properly reflected in their advice to clients.
So, Mr. Nathan,can you at least be honest and narrate some of the stories of your disgruntled clients?
One consolation of the market downturn is that Ron Nathan is more somber now and has refrained from making his wife a punching bag for his nasty jokes. Perhaps, he can get out of this with suggestions on how his fate can be more closely followed by his clients. How about that, Ron?

President Mar Roxas? It may not matter...

2007-08-17T01:15:00.000+08:00

With still over two years before the next presidential elections, Philippine pundits are already obsessing about the potential candidates, although some commentators argue that the landscape will have changed radically by then, either with a dictatorship or a parliamentary system dominated by the same elite.
Last night I had a chance to view an interview with one of the most articulate and ‘wonkish’ of the 2010 contenders, by one of the (if not the) sharpest talk show hosts on Philippine tv.
Because there are no ideologically defined political parties in the Philippines, voters usually look for personalities that have the most of their desiderata in a leader. Let me qualify this a bit. The Left is usually assumed by the so-called intellectual elite to offer a distinct alternative, but the Philippine Left, almost two decades after the end of the Cold War, is still finding its bearings. Its political participation is limited and its parties and their programs suffer from the same superstition centering on the battle between Good and Evil as their bourgeois counterparts are.
Ricky Carandang and his colleague Manolo Quezon have of late rightly brought the issues of poverty and inequality into focus in their work and it was to be expected that Carandang would confront Roxas on these issues. Roxas would be categorized as a compassionate conservative in the US and a left-winger here. But because I am far to the left of the Democrats, I would still consider him just as an over-cautious liberal. Roxas’s program on equality is to allocate (actually reallocate) funds to education and health. He will not impose new taxes. I would, especially more punitive ‘sin’ taxes on cigarets and alcohol ( I am a former heavy smoker and still a tippler) and impose efficiency-enhancing environmental taxes ( fuel prices in the Philippines are too low, especially from the standpoint of environmentalists) and lessen income taxes on the middle class.
But it is possible that Roxas will be the best in the field in 2010. And that is only because the Left, advocating a shorter path to poverty eradication and greater equality, doesn’t really have a significant constituency. Why not? I don’t really know but I will attempt to answer this later.
How much of a difference can Mar Roxas make? Not much, as the evidence marshalled by Steven Levitt shows. But it can, if you read it, especially the links in the comments, more carefully.

Chances are GMA is fantasizing

2007-08-13T02:40:00.000+08:00

What is the price elasticity of demand for fantasy? I don't know, and neither does GMA. But I suspect it would depend on the kind of fantasy one is buying. But the president fears that raising the prices of lotto tickets might drive people to switch to illegal numbers games, which, I think, shouldn't be illegal in the first place.

Lotteries are technically mostly losing propositions for players, not because of the low probabilities of winning fantastic wealth, but because of the administrative costs and profit margins of the operators and the government take. Otherwise, the game would be fair, meaning the ticket price would be equal to the probability of winning multiplied by the pot. In the case of 6/42, where the chance of hitting the jackpot is one in 5,245,786 and not a million and one as reported here, the jackpot should be 52,457,860 if the choices are uniformly distributed and all the numbers are taken, for the expected value to equal P10. (Here I assume away the consolation prices as insignificant). But the PCSO guarantees only P3 million for this variant, which implies that at a minimum, the PCSO assumes that there are at least 545,454 fantasizers at the start of each 'game').

I have observed that the queues do get longer as the pot increases, but at a declining rate, which means that eventually the lottery becomes fair and perhaps, even a winning proposition. So people are not that dumb after all, as mainstream economics suggests, starting with the letdown that lotteries are a regressive tax on the innumerate.

Many years ago, I welcomed the articles of one Dean Jorge Bocobo in the pages of the Inquirer because he 'sounded' numerate and scientific, as opposed to many opinion writers whose only claim was the strength of their convictions and prejudices, until one day he wrote a feature on the lottery, betraying his lack of understanding of probability theory and statistics. Unfortunately, when I see him on TV these days, I get the impression he has retrogressed even further to the level of the pundits he used to criticize.

If the president were sincere in her concern for impoverished players of lotto, she would be more productive if she reduces admin and operating costs of the lottery and revisiting the contract with the private operator. But more importantly, she can also reform the funds allocation system of the PCSO. This is a difficult task, I imagine because these funds are under presidential discretion. But she can convince me if she relinquishes control and makes PCSO earnings part of general funds under congressional control.
(Disclosure: in 2005 I helped an acquaintance settle hospital bills through political connections, by accessing PCSO funds. His wife underwent expensive brain surgery. Though I would not classify him as poor, there was just no way he could foot the bill. But how many people are able to access such funds, especially if they don't have political connections?)
(Aside: It's funny that one Cris Remonde from Argao, Cebu was one of those protesting the PCSO move. He might be related to Cerge Remonde of the presidential management staff, tasked by Arroyo to discuss the matter with the PCSO.
So what are the benefits and costs of fantasizing? While economics can help, perhaps psychology can do better.
If President Arroyo fantasizes about leaving a legacy for the Philippines, the chance of that might be one in a billion, and she also might need professional help. Wanna bet?

Come to your census

2007-08-12T04:03:00.000+08:00

Actually, the enumerators will come to you. In the fifteen years or more I've lived in Teachers Village West, I've never met any of the census enumerators. This is a very important matter for both the public and private sectors.

In the two times I could have been included in the censuses, the interviewers just left forms in the hole in the wall. Next time I meet them, I will even ask them to come inside the apartment because I myself have a number of questions to ask them as part of my own private surveys.

For example, the last time I looked at the NSCB figures, there were at most 5000 single male-headed households in Quezon City. Am I an outlier? Or within the norm of households headed by single males.

The enumerators in the latest survey can count on me to serve them coffee, at the very least. At most I will engage them in discussions on statistics and econometrics. At worse, I will serve them breakfast.

More than twenty years ago, my sister's shirt, suggesting population stats would be broken down by age and sex sounded funny. Because I'm already sixty seven, the slogan is no longer amusing.

Masinloc and Philippine power rates (1)

2007-08-12T01:22:00.000+08:00

Except for the self-congratulatory releases from the energy bureaucracy, the response to the successful bidding of the 600-MW coal-powered Masinloc plant has been muted. At $ 930 million, the bid of Singapore-based and AES-led consortium was 50% more than the winning bid of YNN Pacific, which forfeited its rights after failing to pay the required downpayment last year. The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (PSALM) has divulged neither the bids of the five other bidders nor its reservation price. But its announcement did say that all the bids surpassed the latter. Some reporters revealed all the bids, but the figures have neither been confirmed nor denied. This is PSALM's release.
In the first round, all the competing bids were revealed to members of Congress whose various committees launched investigations in aid of one thing or another. But let’s get back to this later.

So, what would the sale, if concluded successfully, mean for the Philippine electricity consumer? The short and long answers are, it depends on how competitive the electricity markets in the country will really be in in both the medium and long term.

To understand the consequences for the consumer, we need first to understand how the privatization of NPC assets affects NPC rates in the short run. In the short short run, it won’t. This is because of the so-called regulatory lag, which delays warranted upward or downward adjustments in rates due to changed circumstances. But in the medium and longer term, my bet is the high valuation by the winning bidder presages higher rates, and not just higher rates, but higher rates based on higher profit margins for the new owner of the generation asset. (In nominal terms, there is no way but up for rates because of higher fuel prices based ultimately on world demand).

If the sale is concluded, then, before the end of the year, the new owners will be a new participant in the wholesale market. Most of its net revenues will depend on the market-clearing price and its operating costs----mainly variable or fuel costs. Let’s grant that the latter does play a role in the equation, because the new managers, with greater accountability to the new owners, have greater and more palpable incentives to reduce costs. But I find it difficult to imagine that the differences in the bids can be attributed to this factor. In my experience, the owners and managers of newly privatized power assets usually retain the technical personnel, whose bright ideas were just suppressed and ignored by a system lacking in incentives and accountability. The new owners don’t have an Einstein up their sleeve and even if they did, the other bidders would have had access to him or her, at the right price.

My guess is that the new owners can justify their high valuation or recoup their investmentsonly by exercising market power in the wholesale market. In the long run, this is not necessarily bad for the consumer. But in the the short and immediate periods, expect higher rates, but don’t blame me.

update on the travails of Philippine UNDP staff

2007-08-09T17:04:00.000+08:00

Here's an update on the 'inaction' of the UNDP on complaints lodged against UNDP country director Noble. It seems all the New York office could do is acknowledge the problem. In the meantime, the Philippine staff are in limbo.

Help! Our prayers have been answered....

2007-08-08T15:17:00.000+08:00

Last week, a top official of the Department of Science and Technology was on TV saying that if cloud-seeding efforts did not succeed in inducing rain to help fill our dams and inducing cooler weather, we could do nothing more but pray... A science official's resort to prayer doesn't really inspire faith.

Of course not everyone agrees on the power of prayer, as a US governor found out.

Now the rains have come. Although it is too early to say whether these will continue and alleviate the water and hydropower shortages, it is clear enough that heavy rains always come with the perennial consequences: flooding, traffic jams, lost school-days...

One of these days, our top officials, failing to sell the idea of emergency powers for the executive, might consult with a Norwegian princess on talking to angels. It is unfortunate that this member of the royalty proves that royalty can be such royal... By the way, Norway has a very sensible policy in managing it's oil resources, treating these as an endowment for all it's citizens instead of squandering these in the short term.

Greed's not always good

2007-08-08T14:58:00.000+08:00

The raw assumption that economic agents are primarily motivated by selfishness has been refined in recent decades. Here is a recent study which illuminates motivations in human market interations. Scientific American Mind: Is Greed Good?
Economists are finding that social concerns often trump selfishness in financial decision making,a view that helps to explain why tens of millions of people send money to strangers they find on the Internet...

Clouds, now, from both sides

2007-08-04T01:59:00.001+08:00

I’ve looked at clouds and the climate for over two decades and I must say the claims of our weather, energy, and science officials are a bit befuddling.

In the early 1990’s I was investigating the remote and immediate causes of the crippling power shortages, and observed that unseasonably bad weather inflicted a double whammy on power consumers in the Philippines. The less rain there was, the less hydroelectric power availability and thus the higher were electricity production costs. At the same time, less rain entailed higher ambient temperatures and thus greater demand for airconditioning. This is true for the whole country, and to all countries similarly situated. It is a double whammy indeed, for both supply and demand factors result in lower satisfaction at a much higher price.

From Nick Nichols I learned that Cyril del Callar of NPC had been quoted as saying that the current cloud-seeding operations were meant more to lower ambient temperatures, and thus lower airconditioning demand, rather than to increase the water levels in the dams of the hydropower facilities. Yet, the pronouncements of spokespeople of the departments of agriculture and of science of technology belie this. And so does the an article in the weekly newsletter of NPC, which clearly associates the cloud-seeding with attempts to elevate dam water levels.

I had a brief exchange with Cyril first to ask him whether there was any ‘optimal’ cloud-seeding effort level. Perhaps he did not appreciate the import of my question and said no. He said that in terms of NPC cash operations, the expenses were justified.

Now, if you follow me, why don’t we spend billions instead of a few million to induce rain? I am an advocate of science and economics and would thus suggest that government spend on cloud-seeding as much as and until the incremental costs exceed the marginal benefits. And, to my knowledge, we are far from there, although I need to study both the science and economics more thoroughly.

Incidentally, government spokesmen recently admitted that cloud-seeding operations could be concentrated on specific areas when clouds were favorable. That might buttress suspicions that government can exercise weather control to lessen attendance in poitical opposition rallies. Triple whammy!

Pacific GOODBYE

2007-08-04T01:59:00.000+08:00

In the next few days, I expect Pacific Internet to give me an award for being such a dumb and lazy customer. And that would really be embarassing, as I take a personal and professional interest in competition policy. I confess: I stayed Pacific for five years even after knowing that in the last three, there were many better quality options and at much lower prices.

In economics, one explanation as to why prices do not really adjust as fast as costs (you will probably contest this) is what is called the ‘suki’ effect---prices are rigid upwards because merchants want to keep existing customers. But what I’ve found and illustrated is a perverse ‘suki’ effect. Customers take dung from their merchants and service providers until they become almost homicidal.

If you have the patience, read the following exchange between me and my ISP provider, and weep.

Dear Ms. Aimee Colangoy,

I am not sure if you responded at all to my note below because when I opened my pacific mailbox in the morning of August 1, your system no longer accepted my username and I could thus no longer log in to it. A check with the mail2web site confirmed that you had in fact deleted my pacific mailbox. Finally, I checked with your tech support and was told that my account had been 'terminated.'

I let some time pass before writing you because my initial reaction to the facts stated above was really anger and annoyance. A careful reading of my note below would suggest that I was still expecting a reaction or confirmation from you in regard to my wishes. Your own website says that "all requests for termination are subject for (sic) confirmation."

It is possible that you took my wish as imperative because perhaps you know from experience that many people just walk away from their 'terminal' bills after or just before signing on to an alternative service. In my case, I have an auto-debit arrangement with you and had no intention of simply walking away. Imagine my surprise therefore at your action. I had not even informed friends and associates about any change of e-mail address (although I do have another POP address, this is known only to a select few). This is not really an unremediable problem, though it is still annoying. What is really probably irremediable is that some people may have sent me mail on July 31 and their mail was accepted by my mailbox (and they thus did not receive any returned mail notifications) and I have lost access to such mail. Can this be remedied at your end? Of course I can always write to all my contacts and ask them to resend whatever they sent on July 31. But that is still annoying, isn't it? And what if there were e-mails which needed urgent responses?

So what do I do now? I asked one of your tech support 'engineers' to ask you to call me and explain what really happened. I now understand that your billings for excess usage are delayed two months. So what you might do is send me my final bill with the excess usage for June and July minus the disputed usage period, not as a matter of 'goodwill' as you mentioned in your earlier letter, but as a matter of fairness. You might also do the noble thing of just forgetting about those charges to compensate me for all the aggravation I have had to experience with your service. That would fit my definition of goodwill.

From my end , I have asked my credit provider to reject any billings from you. So, if you insist on collecting, I will just pay some other way after we can agree on a just and fair amount.

To be fair, your company is one of a few in the Philippines that are respectful enough to have customer service people who respond in writing to customer complaints. I do appreciate that, and hope that your management will invest in training letter writers to use better English. (For example, it should be : Thank you for your continued patronage of (not to) Pacific Internet).

Finally, let me assure you that I write not to insult or denigrate your efforts. I know you are trying your best to attend to the needs of customers. My beef is more with your management and perhaps the owners (if they really know what's going on) who insist on duping customers with an overpriced service and who do not seem to care if they continue to lose customers to competition which provides much higher quality at much lower prices. They seem to think Filipinos are dumb. I must admit I have been dumb and lazy for waiting this long to say goodbye.

I wish you luck and hope your managers really wake up.

viking logarta
----- Original Message -----
From: "viking" <viking_l@pacific.net.ph>
To: <csg@pacific.net.ph>
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2007 11:31 AM
Subject: Re: request for correction

> your letter is quite difficult to understand. Never mind. What I really also> want to do is to give up my account as soon as possible.> viking logarta> ----- Original Message -----> From: <csg@pacific.net.ph>> To: "viking" <viking_l@pacific.net.ph>> Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2007 9:58 AM> Subject: Re: request for correction> > > > Dear Mr. Logarta,> >> > Good Day!> >> > This refers to your 31 July 2007 e-mail message regarding your> subscription> > for Pacific Internet account number 1000083476-5.> >> > Please be advised that we cannot pro-rate your August 2007 monthly> > subscription fee and adjust the May 2007 excess usage that was billed to> > your July 01, 2007 statement.> >> > For clients that experiencing problem in our connection or cannot log-on> we> > can only give bonus hours on top of the monthly plan, but if your records> > show that you have zero usage for that month that is the time that we can> > give reversal on the monthly subscription fee. For excess usage, we can> > reverse or adjust the excess usage if the account was hacked.> >> > The additional 5hours bonus will add on your Speed@ccess 10 hours Plan> > effective August 2007.> >> > We hope we have helped you with this information.> >> > Should you have further inquiries, please email us at <csg@pacific.net.ph>> > or call our Customer Care Center at 918-5100.> >Thank you for your continued patronage to Pacific Internet!Yours truly,Aimee Colangoy/Customer Service AssociatePacific Internet Philippines> >> > From:"viking" <viking_l@pacific.net.ph>> > Sent:Jul 31, 2007 06:08 AM> > To:<csg@pacific.net.ph>> > cc:> > Subject:Re: request for correction> > I would really appreciate it more if you simply deducted the 5 hours from> > my> > August statement.> > viking logarta> >> >> > > Dear Mr. Logarta,> > >> > > A pleasant day to you!> > >> > > This refers to your 30 July 2007 e-mail message regarding your> > subscription> > > for Pacific Internet account number 1000083476-5.> > >> > > We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience you have experienced lately> > > with our services especially with the internet connection and our> current> > > rates. We greatly appreciate your feedback as we constantly look for> new> > > ways to serve you better. Please be advised that your concerns and> > > suggestion were duly noted for proper handling. Rest assured that we> > will> > > look into this matter to ensure the high level of service you deserve> > from> > > Pacific Internet.> > >> > > Please be advised that your e-mail message has been re-evaluated and> > > approval has been granted as goodwill. We shall credit five (5) hours> to> > > your account for August 2007, which means you have total of 15 hours> > access> > > time for next month.> > >> > > We hope we have helped you with this information.> > >> > > Should you have further questions, please feel free to call our Customer> > > Care Center at 918-5100 (9AM-6PM, Monday to Friday) or email us at> > > csg@pacific.net.ph and we will be glad to assist you.> > >> > > Thank you for your continued patronage to Pacific Internet!> > >> > > Yours truly,> > >> > > Aimee Colangoy/Customer Service Associate> > > Pacific Internet Philippines> > >Dear madam/sir:> > >Thank you for alerting me about my excess usage, because it motivated meto access the record of my usage from your website. This is something Ihardly ever did because historically, I seldom ever exceeded the allotment under myplan.I write to inform you that starting on July 20, your services had been severely impaired because I could not access any websites and the only use I had for the connection was to access my pacific mail. I could not even access my other POP3 mail. I had to keep refreshing and logging out and in to see whether normal service had resumed. You can readily ascertain my claim from examining my usage log because I would dial up so many times in a day, something which is contrary to my usual behavior. Also, I simplyrefrained from logging in for a number of days out of sheer frustration (July 21-22).
I called up your technical support service early in the morning of July24 and was informed that your system had indeed been experiencing problemspartly as a result of heavy traffic because of your 'unlimited use'packages and partly because of connectivity problems with Bayantel. You can alsoascertain my claim because I had to dial up your Cebu access numberseveral times when I became desperate and lo and behold I could get normalaccess using that line, and incurring losng-distance charges! The problem persistedeven after I executed the suggestions of your 'engineer', which was tomanually enter the IP addresses. I could no longer reach your techsupport an hour later because your phone computer would say that your customerservice was closed on account of a 'holiday'. I was able to reach yourtech support again only on July 25 or 26 and after executing another set ofinstructions from another 'engineer', my access to websites had onlymarginally improved. To cut the long story short, it was only in themorning of July 28 that normal access to websites was restored.You would agree with me that is highly unfair and irregular for you tocharge regular rates for the usage when your system was not functioningup to par, and also considering that your rates are hardly competitive. Idon't even like the idea of having to write this request because I feel it isincumbent upon you to automatically adjust the billings in cases such asthis. Thus, I would appreciate it very much if you act on my request andreflect some adjustments in my August bill rather than have to wait fora reversal of charges after the fact. My total usage from July 20 to July27 sums up to 12.2 hours and it is up to you how to adjust this consideringthe problems I have mentioned.I await your prompt response.Sincerely yours,viking logarta> > >> > > p.s.> > >> > > Your letter informs me that excess usage is billed to the nearest> > 15-minute> > > block. When I examined my July bill however, I learned that you were> > > charging me the integer value of usage period in hours: INT(10.9)=10.> > Thus,> > > your claim as to your billing procedure is incorrect.>

Reyes: Energy is a political commodity

2007-07-20T04:33:00.000+08:00

It is one thing to say that it requires great political skill to manage energy policy correctly and quite another to say that energy is a special political commodity, just because price movements can bring political unrest.

Since the deregulation of the downstream oil industry in the second half of the 1990’s (after a supreme court hurdle and a decision I found ignorant), petroleum products pricing has in the main been left to market forces. This is not to say that there is no market power being exercised by the major players. There clearly is, but I do not miss the days of the Oil Price Stabilization Fund (OPSF) and the associated subsidies, when prices were regulated and such regulations were hostage to political acceptability (including by coup plotters).

Just imagine if refined productc prices were still regulated now, with the P/$ exchange rate and the world price as these are now. I’m glad consumers---most of them anyway---are adjusting without taking to the streets. I dare say that even now, petroleum prices are lower than they would be if we considered the full impact of their use on the environment. If prices were still regulated today, the government would be heavily subsidizing oil prices and it would not be beyond the current administration to subsidize prices just to remain in power. This would have been disastrous as oil price subsidies generally benefit the richer sections of the population---regardless of the protestations of the misinformed sections of the Left.

Comes now the newly designated energy secretary, who candidly admits his only qualification to the post is that he is ‘full of energy.’ It is also likely that he is full of something else. It might also be true that he is indeed a fast learner and that thus far, he has not disappointed the appointing power. But if he indeed has the management experience and the IQ to manage difficult government departments, Reyes should have been appointed chief of PIGSA (Philippine Inter-Galactic Space Agency) which needs his skills.

The truth is that Malacanang has just been using him as a convenient football and kicking him to energy conveniently leaves the DENR post vacant for the former mayor of Manila, he I cannot name because I puke because of all his sanctimoniuous and false religiosity---although I might still puke even if the religiosity were sincere. The former mayor would have been more obviously incompetent in the energy post. This does not mean he would be good as environment secretary, or that Reyes would do so badly at the energy post, though this is laden with many challenges that even Lotilla was just beginning to appreciate. But we cannot fault Popo for leaving now. Popo deserves a rest, although the timing is not good, especially with the problems of power sector reforms not really close to resolution. (Manila Standard Today yesterday said Lotilla was fired. False).

Former energy secretary Geronimo Z. Velasco passed away a few days ago and his passing was publicly announced by an acquaintance at the PNOC. It might be that the man did the nation a great service. But comparisons are difficult because he managed the energy sector under radically different circumstances. And he had economic and political resources unimaginable at this time. Our sympathies to his family and friends.

New Inquirer columnists

2007-07-18T00:33:00.000+08:00

I’m really glad the Inquirer continually upgrades its slate of columnists. Readers, at least those whom I interact with, had and have been complaining about the dominance of legal ‘experts’ and know it alls, including former justices of the high court with their sanctimonious and annoying catholic religiosity (I dare say that the Philippines cannot modernize without a fully secular Supreme Court).

The recent additions (never mind those whose space allocations have been diminished) are Mahar Mangahas of the Social Weather Stations and the Inquirer blogger John Nery. Both can attract more readers because they have more intelligent commentary and don’t insult readers with their laziness and outright dumbness.

Unfortunately, Mangahas could have been more circumspect and ethical instead of featuring what could easily be misinterpreted as a self-serving column in his inaugural column. (Disclosure: SWS is just a few hundred steps from my place and I have used its services in the past). Still, a more grounded analysis of social opinion is needed and Mangahas’s column will hopefully provide that. Also, his outfit can also probably provide more insights on how social opinions are shaped...

As for John Nery, all I can say is that he is diligent and provides a much-needed short-term institutional memory, sorely lacking in the country’s political scene.

I hope the Inquirer succeeds in stopping the decline of newspaper readership bedeviling all newspapers worldwide.

Also, I hope the producers of Manolo Quezon’s ANC program do something to spruce up the format of his ‘Explainer.’ It is easy to see the effort put into it but they should get more feedback and adjust. Otherwise, all the effort will be wasted. Last night’s on scams was useful but could have been designed much better.

Human Rights? Really?

2007-07-16T00:47:00.000+08:00

I earlier misattributed this to my friend Robert Francis Garcia, who says the article is by Susan 'Toots' Ople

Our Times
How to pick up a pen from the floor

HOW does one pick up a pen that he or she accidentally drops to the floor? If it’s a woman, more often the man nearest to the pen picks it up and hands it over to its owner with a smile. If it’s a man, he just bends a bit or stoops (depending on his height) to pick it up. No big deal, right?
Apparently, not in the United Nations Resident Coordinator’s Office, if letters and complaints from aggrieved staff are to be believed. It seems the head of this office, a woman named Nileema Noble dropped her pen. A male staff who happened to be in the room when this happened was about to pick the pen from the floor. The lady boss motioned him to stop and proceeded to call out her secretary’s name. The secretary, who was seated in her desk outside the boss’ office, went in. She meekly picked up the pen from the floor and handed it to her boss. And this, my friends, is one particular example of how a UN official based in the Philippines prefers to pick up her pen.

I write this piece with malice towards none, but with a firm belief that all people – regardless of nationality – must treat people with respect. This is the foundation of decent work. Aware that the official being complained about has her rights, too, I promise her an equal right to rebut the information volunteered by her staff, through this column.

But first, here are the points raised by a group of Filipino staff members who recently sought the help of the Blas Ople Policy Center so that they could ventilate their grievances:

1. The head of the UNRC, without minimum courtesies as expected in any other organization, unceremoniously terminated two UN Staff, one, an assistant resident representative for operations, and the other, a UN coordination specialist. They were given only a few hours to leave the UN premises after they were sacked. Adding insult to injury, they were told that if they keep silent and don’t contest her decision to pre-terminate their contracts, they can have other opportunities to work within the UN system. However, if they talk, she will make sure they never get to work for the UN again.

2. The unpopularity of the UNRC head is reflected in the UNDP’s Global Staff Survey where she came out last among the UNDP resident representatives in terms of approval rating. She scored 43%, a much lower score than the global average of 60%. Majority of UN resident representatives in Manila received 90%+ in approval ratings.

3. UNRC personnel continue to be traumatized in her presence. For example, she would throw documents on the floor when she was angry and then order her secretary to pick them up for her. She would also go into a flying rage whenever someone argues or tries to correct her. On another occasion, she literally shook another staff that dared proffer an explanation during one of Mrs. Noble’s foul moods.

4. This dynamic has spilled over to implementation of various government-UN projects with the disbandment of project management staff offices to help bridge these projects. Several government implementing agencies were surprised to learn about the UNRC’s unilateral decision to change implementing partners without due process, disband project management offices even at the risk of affecting results and imposing new program realities despite earlier agreements reached with stakeholders.
These are just some of the complaints raised by a group of staffmembers who came to see me a few days before my column deadline. One of them, former coordination specialist, Robert Francis Garcia, said he has written the Department of Foreign Affairs, the UN Ombudsman and the rest of the UN Country Team members and the UNDP Headquarters in New York. He also gave me a copy of his letter.

In it, he wrote: "The Coordination Specialist position was designed to assist the UN Resident Coordinator (UNRC or simply RC, officially the highest-ranking UN position in a country) in harmonizing work among various UN agencies. The post as vacated successively by two other people (the first one, temporarily). I won’t hazard a reason for their premature departure, though it is particularly telling that people under Nileema’s watch are leaving in droves. More than 20 people have left the UNDP since she came, and counting. I also cannot speak in their behalf, but I can speak from my own experience."
"Tolerance and understanding are basic human values. They are essential for international civil servants, who must respect all persons equally, without any distinction whatsoever. This respect fosters a climate and a working environment sensitive to the needs of all. To achieve this in a multicultural setting calls for a positive affirmation going well beyond passive acceptance." [Article 6 of the Standards of Conduct for the International Civil Service, The United Nations Ombudsman’s Office.]"

"There was never an instance when she did not raise her voice. The surreal "meeting" (when he learned he was being sacked) on May 4 was not unusual – it was a daily occurrence with Nileema."
I am convinced that the staff members who came to see me are telling the truth. I hope that the United Nations look into their complaints. The Department of Foreign Affairs could also help by calling the attention of the UNRC on how our nationals should be treated. We talk about protection for Overseas Filipino Workers. Here at home, we must be just as passionate in protecting the rights of our own workers.

Sometimes a simple gesture speaks volumes about the humanity of a person. So tell me, how do you pick up your pen from the floor?

Something fishy? Maybe not...

2007-07-13T00:48:00.001+08:00

I don’t know if the fish vendors in Minglanilla were just pulling my hair, but when I asked them where the mall-mall in the market came from, they answered ‘just there,’ meaning just off Cebu island. For so many years, seafood in Cebu markets were claimed to have come from neighboring Bohol, where the descendants of Dagohoy thrive and are not only gentler and brighter, but are also not arrogant like Cebuanos. Maybe the vendors were telling the truth to my tortured face. Maybe some good things are being done to restore the productivity of Cebu marine life. Maybe the efforts of Tony Oposa and the deceased Mario dela Victoria are really paying off.

Actually, it is not so difficult to imagine, especially if government gets the incentives right and enforces the rules. In a recent BBC documentary, the heroic efforts of dela Victoria, Tony, and Mayor Osmena were acknowledged. I hope this is not a mirage induced by bacteria from the fish, shrimps, squid, and crabs I ate during the visit. When I was a grade schooler in the sixties, the waters off Talisay were teeming with all kinds of marine life, from jelly fish and all sorts of molusks, and shallow water fish. And then the feces and other waste from the exploding population in the city drifted to where we used to swim and cavort in the water.

By the way, when you are in Cebu, you should try out the fare at ZONE360 in Grill Avenue on Mango avenue. It is operated by friends, but my judgment is not clouded even if they served me free wine and lechon Cebu .

'extra-judicial killings'

2007-07-13T00:48:00.000+08:00

You have to give it to the intrepid Ricky Carandang of ANC. He always manages to interview the most unlikely guests, and last night’s were truly exceptional: Chief Justice Reynato Puno and Associate Justice Adolf Azcuna. Listening to the justices reassured me that the judicial branch has at last and at least have been seized by the problem of extra-judicial killings, actually an inappropriate phrase since we no longer have the death penalty, and for good reason, and thus we cannot have judicial killings. The two justices were only being diplomatic in refraining from publicly castigating the two other branches---especially the executive---for their inaction and perhaps, even complicity in the murders and disappearance of political activists. Our alleged president would not have shown any concern had not human rights organizations mobilized international opinion on the spate of killings and disappearances. One can only wish that the supreme court had the power to fire justice secretaries, because the one we have does not know the meaning of shame.

Azcuna enlightened mewith a discussion of the Minnesota protocol, where, if the victims are last seen with military or state agents, it is the burden of the latter to explain and extricate themselves. After all, it is the state which is supposed to have a monopoly of the gun. This protocol becomes more relevant in the case of a government which has taken Donald Rumsfeld’s logic: the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Thus, the state can arrest you, torture you, and bomb other countries to kingdom come on mere suspicion of terrorist inclinations.

I don’t know if the justices volunteered to be interviewed, but if they did, they chose the interviewer well. Carandang is competent, prepares well in advance, and has exemplary interviewing skills. More likely it was he who approached them and the justices could not refuse. In any case, the interview was to bring attention to this Monday’s summit on extra-judicial killings and one can only hope it succeeds.

Also yesterday, Conrad de Quiros discussed his frustrated search for the movie ‘Missing’ which affected me too. It was played not too long ago in one of the cable movie channels. I think it is available from the many movie websites abroad.

And before I forget, I really appreciated The Big Picture’s interview with the officials of the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) and former economic planning secretary Felipe Medalla on problems with the estimates of GDP growth. Unfortunately, this was not carried intelligently by the national papers. Among the respectable columnists, only Ciel Habito mentioned the problem and the discussion but he did not have the space for a satisfying follow-up. ( I asked my niece Charo Logarta whether she found the latest estimates credible and her response was to the effect that these were not estimates but ‘actual’ figures as she understood them from a press conference. I had to remind her that figures based on a survey or sample should be treated as estimates.)

I will say my piece on these issues some other time.

where in the world is pablo john garcia

2007-07-12T00:40:00.001+08:00

Living in a hole in the wall in Quezon City is hardly the ideal way to live but I find living in Metro Manila notches higher than in Cebu, where the parochialism and pettiness is magnified many times over. In Cebu where I’m from, the Cebu City mayor and the governor are locked in battles over so many petty issues and many important ones (garbage, transport, education, environmental issues, water). But do they know the difference? While I generally side with the governor on the issues, I still find her petty and barriotic and onion-skinned.

I used to be able to claim friendship with one of the governor’s brothers. Pablo John, bright, humble when I pretended to know him, with a way with language, and an unsurpassed sense of (self-deprecating; that is the best kind of humor) humor. I wonder where Pablo John is now and whether he is starting to take himself too seriously, which would be the end of hunor.

I would like to imagine Pablo John making fun of the way the governor and her advisers are running the province. He can and could always use his formidable IQ against his former client when drunk or sleeping or any combinaton of the two states. Were he in some other and fundamentally different set of circumstances, Pablo would poke fun in original ways and there is no lack of subjects to poke fun at. Cameras monitoring the demeanor of employes, the Fuente park, ‘outlawing’ frowns, etc. I admit not knowing the details of policies which can be the butt of jokes and insults but let’s grant the governor is right on every issue. I would still miss Pablo’s humor brought to bear on them and his relatives.

Right after I learned he won the contest in Cebu’s third district, I naughtily sent him a message: “Cebuano voters voted for you, your dad, and your sister because they found your anti-dynasty program compelling.” His response was to the effect that only people with mediocre minds and who are unelectable would harbor such a view. True, but not absolutely.

I am disgusted with Joe DV and I wish the elder Garcia can wrest control of the House. And I am being Filipino, not a Cebuano, and least of all being friendly to Pablo John. But as a Filipino, let me say I miss Pablo John’s humor and warmth. And most of all I wish he’ll do well in the House.

Cheap Phil Corporations 2: PAL

2007-07-12T00:40:00.000+08:00

Philippine Airlines

In the nineties some friends used to joke about the pre-landing announcement of Vietnamese Airlines which went something like this: “Comrades, we are landing, immediately!” It was just the culture and there was no emergency landing by a Harrier jet, or worse, a crash.

More civil airlines usually had and still have much longer and graceful announcements advising passengers of safety regulations and other flight information. But what got my goat was the PAL pilots’ advice that ‘our flying time will take us approximately X hours and Y minutes. Having been the OC I was (and still am), I would write notes on napkins meant for the flight staff saying “either you say ‘ the flight is approximately X hours and Y minutes’ or ‘flight time is around X hours and Y minutes.’ About ten years ago I finally heard the announcement said correctly and wrote a complimentary note to the staff. Just before disembarking, I was approached by the graceful chief flight attendant who gave me a complimentary fruit basket.

But on a recent flight from Cebu to Manila, yikes, the pilot made the dreaded and jarring announcement. As I was conversing with a fellow traveler, I had no time to write but this is what I should have and would have written as a suggestion: ‘Our flight time is sufficient for you, dear passengers, to think of creative ways to torture us ala Jack Bauer, or insult us into speaking correct English.’

In the so-called age of information technology and the alleged productivity and time-saving procedures for customers, PAL gives us the option to reserve and purchase tickets electronically through the internet. But then, after paying by credit card, the airline still requires you to go to a ticket office and secure a hard copy of your electronic ticket. The whole procedure really is moronic.

I remember that in the nineties, way before internet transactions, I could make a reservation by phone, be given a booking number, and allowed to pay by ATM, and use the ATM receipt as the flight ticket at the airport counter. Ahhh, progress is so slow, and sometimes it even goes backward.

But there are some good things to be said about PAL, especially the check-in staff. I was supposed to pay some amount because my checked baggage weighed twice the ‘free’ allowance. But as I was able to espy friends who had some allowance to spare, the PAL staff arranged usage of the excess allowance without incident and efficiently. But the airport check-in computers are so slow you could have a massage while in line.

(Here’s an aside. I told one of my friends that availing of his baggage allowance would have the effect of lowering GDP figures for the year but lead to an increase in human happiness in Philippine society. Think about that and the limitations of GDP as a measure of social welfare. We can be kinder to our fellows and GDP would be lower. And I can think of so many ways GDP can be higher and people poorer. Believe me, I’m a lifelong student of economics).

Cheap multi-billion dollar Philippine Corporations:PLDT

2007-07-12T00:36:00.000+08:00

It bothers me that one of the multibillion-dollar Philippine corporations and that is a market bellwether doen’t respect its customers enough to maintain friendly and clear websites. Worse, those who maintain the sites murder the queen’s English with instructions to the effect that they wouldn’t process your application if you don’t give them all the required ‘informations.’ But they do assure you that the ‘informations’ you provide would be treated confidentially.

I had concluded that I was getting a very bad deal from Bayantel for landline services and Pacific for the internet, especially after reading MyDSL ads of PLDT (print ads which did not give any number to call). So I visited the PLDT DSL website and behold and lo, it was such a taxing experience. For one, it was only then I found out that you would first have to have an existing PLDT landline to avail of the promo DSL rate, when the impression you get from the ads was that the rate covered both. I was referred to another site to apply for a landline. But this site also wasn’t clear about the overall package cost! And the websites don’t provide phone numbers for those who’ve lost patience after unsuccessfully navigating around them for useful ‘informations.’ PLDT prides itself as a world-class communcations company. This really makes me puke. I wonder if Mr. Pangilinan even knows the ‘informations’ I require. I feel like putting all the ‘informations’ about my ‘frustrations’ and sticking them up his ‘informations’ highway. The truth is, the whole experience just gave me ‘indigestions.’

Are Men Necessary?

2007-07-01T02:55:00.000+08:00

ARE MEN NECESSARY?
(When Sexes Collide)
Maureen Dowd

(Berkley, 2005, 338 pp; $15)

When Maureen Dowd first ‘googled’ her name in the internet, she claims, the first return was a video of her giving Bill Clinton a job, probably because her coverage and commentary on Clinton’s impeachment and trial over the Monica Lewinsky affair were what clinched the Pulitzer for her in 1999, and she was perceived as critical of the deranged and hypocritical Ken Starr. But her ascerbic columns on the Bush dynasty and the stupid Republicans were what really caught my attention four or five years ago.

In ‘Are Men Necessary’ I am a bit disappointed but I had been forewarned. In her introduction she dowsed expectations with the usual warning that she was going to raise questions but did not necessarily have answers. To be fair, I still thoroughly enjoyed reading this book because the questions she raises are questions I also ask, as a man with doubtful claims as a feminist.

What strikes me as most relevant at this time is her ambivalence over Hillary and Bill. Although she castigates them both for their failings, and the latter for her betrayal of feminist principles and aspirations for pragmatic and other political aims, her liberal bias still shines through, and her bias is my bias too. If I understand Dowd, she would still probably prefer Hillary winning against the Republicans in 2008, although the timeframe in the book excludes the dawn and rise of Obama.

One thing which really confuses me about the dilemma over principles vs. pragmatism is that the opposing forces never really make their priorities clear, although the clash implies that there has to be a prioritization of principles which one holds dear and that pragmatism merely means that one gives up lower principles over higher ones, at any particular time. In practice, however, one may appeal to the lowest common denominator to get the support of a plurality or a majority to implement a common agenda.

The only solution I can propound at the moment is that ‘principles’ held by individuals and groups may not really be internally consistent and it will take some time to sort them out.

Take for example, Dowd’s plaint against the aspiration of western feminists to be ‘equal’ to men only to later find out that what men wanted was not worth it (at) all. For when the doors were opened, many actually opt to stay home as their version of fulfillment.

In the political sphere, the Philippines can superficially be called more advanced than the U.S. because we have already had two women presidents while there is still a ‘macho’ bias in the U.S. Dowd covered the campaign of Geraldine Ferraro for the vice presidency and recounts the experience in the book, from which I learned a lot of the details.

Yet, the Philippines remains an obviously backward country in terms of equality between genders. Even the so-called Left political parties---especially the party-list parties---are hesitant to advocate genuine divorce laws out of fear of the backlash from the Catholic church, of which many of them still swear allegiance to., and which is why the Philippines still remains as backward as ever. Obviously, gays and lesbians, according to segments of the Philippine Left, don’t belong in hell. But women who escape from unhappy marriages and abusive husbands do. And that is pragmatism.

More Sex is Safer Sex (and also maybe better)

2007-06-28T01:16:00.001+08:00

More Sex is Safer Sex
The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics
Steven E. Landsburg

(Free Press, 2007, pp 274; PhP1170 at fully booked)

Expectedly, Landsburg got a lot of hate mail for the lead essay in this collection from readers who misinterpreted it as advocating promiscuity. It does not. What it does is use economic theory to argue that if responsible individuals shy away from the casual sex market, it leaves that market with a greater proportion of individuals with more risky behavior, and thus increase the risk for other people of contracting HIV.

Landsburg, who writes a popular column (Everyday Economics), is one of a few economists who believe that the world would be a much better place if the findings (and also the methods) of economics had a wider audience, and who act on that belief. He does a good job explaining these findings because he refrains from using economics jargon. He succeeds because he is a good writer, and he is a good writer because he is a clear thinker, though he falters in some instances. (Why he appreciates Scrooge).

The main reason I appreciate Landsburg is that he painstaking explains a key concept in economics without ever using the technical term (externality). As a perpetual student and practioner of environmental economics, I am often frustrated with people who don’t understand the idea, because I am a distance removed from the clear thinking of people like Landsburg.

But back to sex, which is probably why you are my accidental reader. To my knowledge, the AIDS scourge is already contained in the Philippines, but I could be wrong and the health authorities could be lying, or maybe the entrepreneurs of the sex industry here might really be more responsible. (Hey, I’m no expert on the sex industry and I’ve never had sex with a prostitute). But the main assertion in the essay holds, regardless. Certainly such ideas would raise the hackles of ‘respectable’ citizens in a morally challenged and hypocritical Catholic country such as ours. But wait, Landsburg refrains from discussing morality, but recognizes that moral values do matter.

In another essay, he could also be misinterpreted as supporting the Catholic church’s position on birth control in the essay “Be Fruitful and Multiply.” He argues that a larger world population would be good for all of us, but he doesn’t necessarily argue that governments (especially in the developing countries) should not spend tax money educating poor households on the merits of birth control and responsible parenthood).

Readers who enjoyed Freakonomics would probably enjoy this book. But they should know that there is a limit to how much economists would reveal the secrets of their profession, because after some limit, they would start to make themselves dispensable. And they would not generally want to cross that line.

The ‘more sex’ idea is not really his but that of Michael Kremer, a Harvard economist, who did the rigorous analysis and reported the results in “Integrating Behavioral Choice into Epidemiological Models of the AIDS Epidemic” in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

I bought a copy as a wedding present for a very good friend. Books generally make for unimaginative and inappropriate wedding presents, but not in this case. My friend Ben Endriga not only is a good economist and pianist, he would also most likely enjoy reading the lead essay.

Glassner's Gospel of Food

2007-06-25T00:31:00.000+08:00

The Gospel of Food
(Everything you think you know about food is wrong)
Barry Glassner

(Ecco, 2007, 285 pp; $25.95)

It is probable that Glassner must have had some heated exchanges with his editor and publisher over the book’s title, motivated, no doubt, to spark interest and sales. It is also possible he was a willing conspirator. Unfortunately, it does somewhat diminish his credibility on his avowed objective, which is to stimulate a critical attitude toward commonly held beliefs (and myths) about food. To promote one’s own gospel, therefore, contradicts that very aim.

Nevertheless, it is not a fatal flaw, especially if readers take the book seriously and enjoy it besides. One main beef of the author, who teaches sociology at the University of Southern California, is that the obsession with healthy eating has taken the fun out of it, and eating without enjoying, according to a study he cites, actually impedes the body’s intake of nutrients!

Since this is the first book of his that I’ve read, I cannot say whether he has a good grasp of statistical methods and thus, whether his informal surveys of clinical studies are accurate, though I must concede that some of his assertions seem intuitive. But that is precisely the problem; many findings of science run counter to intuition.

He asserts, for instance, that many studies in regard to the health benefits of specific diets (what is in and what is out of them) and other habits have ambiguous results, but he hastens to add that the ill effects of smoking are robust. That seems fairly safe as a tentative conclusion.

These days, when we are bombarded with information and conflicting claims---from the safeness of Metro Manila tap water to the alleged benefits of infant formula and virgin coconut oil---we sometimes feel helpless about how to evaluate information and when to say which is real knowledge ( and this is a recurring theme of my blogs). The only antidote to our insecurities is a critical and scientific outlook (which might also tend to increase our insecurities), regardless of how ‘post-modernist’ outlooks cast doubt on science. But we all act on the basis of what we hold to be true, which is why we don’t jump from cliffs while believing some god who loves us will protect us from the ill effects of gravity.

The book does have revelations which may be taken at face value. My favorite is one which defines natural flavoring ‘additives’, a contradiction in terms but one which is exploited by food manufacturers. The US Food and Drug Administration defines natural flavor and natural flavoring as meaning that:

“the essential oil oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any [product of roasting,heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit jiuce, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.”

And yet, we pay so much at the supermarket when we read “natural”!

I learned about Glassner’s book from Michael Shermer’s column (The Skeptic) in Scientific American earlier this year and my brother Bobby was kind enough to buy and send me a copy.

Read, drink, and enjoy. That is one point that’s difficult to argue with, unless you are a firm believer in the gospel of abstention.

Milking the breasts

2007-06-21T18:42:00.001+08:00

I really hate to milk the issue but the controversy over government regulatory power over commercial interests in regard to the Milk Code does trigger paranoia over which of the sides enjoyed longer breast feeding during childhood. Don’t get me wrong. I have always been a great admirer of breasts and the nutritional value these have been proven to produce, though I am open to the possible criticism, especially from the likes of Peter Wallace, that I was deprived of the nutrients at the formative stages of my life.

Raul C. Pangalangan dealt with the fundamental legal issues in his column in Friday’s issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (June 22). Perhaps I had enough of my mother’s milk to judge that his arguments were generally cogent. Since I am not a lawyer and since I generally hate lawyers, let me move on to the other important issues.

The infant formula companies say they are only protecting free speech rights and thus the right of citizens to information (oops, this I also parrot from Pangalangan’s version of the issue; however his is consistent with the version of Solita Monsod’s, in her column, also in the PDI, June 16.

First of all, let me say that the advertising that is sought to be banned or regulated benefits not only the cause of the advertisers but also the media of advertising. Which is why I do appreciate the efforts of the local media ( the PDI and ANC) to present a balanced picture.

As an example, yesterday I chanced upon the episode of Korina____(I don’t really know how the program is called; all I remember is that it goes by some title and teasers like ‘flavors of the month’ which makes you wonder if the program producers were breast-fed themselves; but I digress).

The first part of the program featured the side of government and non-government organizations promoting infant and mother health. The second part guested Wallace and the lawyer for the infant formula companies. The conlcuding portion presented a lawyer for the UNICEF. Fairly balanced except that there were questions of fact the producers could have resolved by themselves. Well, we can always blame that on lack of time of resources. But that is exactly the point. How do most of us get information? And how do we know which if the so-called claims are right? And we feel we get ‘information’ overloead, are we really equipped to evaluate conflicting claims?

Citizens elect governments partly to help them evaluate all sorts of claims they themselves have no time to validate because validating information, while useful, has benefits less than the cost of doing so. Which is why communities need to cooperate in regard to common problems.

Having worked on issues on energy and the environment for almost three decades, the issue at hand has consequences way beyond the issue of milk, which I milk for other ends.

I will write about these at a later date, but let me give you a preview. How do we address climate change? Is it a problem at all? Should we believe all that the ‘scientists’ and lawyers say? Now in another age of other stupendous claims on additives and biofuels, I believe the problem of information vetting persists. Doesn’t every claim somehow mask a ‘vested’ interest?

Way back during the time of martial law, one of the first edicts of the dictatorship was to ban claims about fuel additives, later to be proven to be mostly unfounded. The overthrow of the dictator brought us to another end of the extreme. Where are we now?

Problem Solved!

2007-06-21T18:42:00.000+08:00

Missing Maguindanao certificates of canvass found
By JAMES MANANGHAYA
The Philippine Star

Who will give Mr. James Mananghaya a reward and what does he intend to do with these documents?

energy self-reliance(2)

2007-06-15T01:26:00.000+08:00

After that brief critique of Dr. Viray’s review of Geronimo Velasco’s book, I’ve decided to write more on energy self-reliance. This time it’s coal.

Back in 1993 when I attended some discussions on the further lifting of quantitative restrictions and the lowering of tariffs for coal, the spokesmen for the local coal industry, as expected, presented the local industry as a champion of its workers. In diplomatic language, I would point out that local coal workers actually were not only underpaid but also faced very hazardous working conditions. Suffice it to say that coal mine explosions were not rare, especially in Cebu mines controlled by a northern warlord. How diplomatic could one be in saying such arguments were shameless.

The other argument was energy security. In a paper I wrote for an NGO (Alternative Forum for Research in Mindanao) also in 1993, on the Apo geothermal development where I looked at the comparative air pollution impacts of the power options for Mindanao and the country, I argued that we could always close local coal mines but make provisions for reopening them when the need arose. That was because, at the time, the tariff protection for the industry was so high and was more than sufficient to make local coal workers rich and also to substantially lower costs for the coal plants at the time. The paper’s assertions were supported with calculations using data from the NPC itself.

Perhaps nowadays, local coal may have improved its position vis-avis imported coal because of some simple technological developments and the rising price of crude oil, but I think the arguments I made are still relevant.

When will Jon Stewart quit?

2007-06-15T01:22:00.000+08:00

Watching Jon Stewart sometimes is one of the high points of my day, partly because he refuses to move on and persists in exposing the international scandal that is Iraq, and also because his irreverence is almost limitless--- though I must admit I cannot possibly be sure of that.

One other reason is that he features many thought-provoking authors (especially agnostics, skeptics, and atheists). The most recent was Allan Brandt (The Cigarette Century) who was especially relevant for me because I’m trying to stop for the nth time. I had not known that the number of smokers continues to grow even with the declining numbers in the United States and Europe. And that is because there is still a mine to be gold-mined, the developing world, especially China and India. (Shame on the members of the Philippine House of Representatives who watered down the law meant to increase cigaret taxes three years ago.)

I had almost succeeded in quitting and had been off for more than two months in 1997 if not for a phone conversation I had with the chair of the Energy Regulatory Board at the time over the phaseout of the Oil Price Stabilization Fund as part of the Oil Deregulation law. He was so exasperating I lit one cigaret and a pack three hours after we hung up. As I had been on nicotine gum, my heart started to palpitate and my neighbor volunteered to bring me to a hospital. Luckily my blood pressure stabilized but I continued to be an addict.

The other episode I saw recently was the one where Stewart criticized the media for its mindless coverage of Paris Hilton, when CNN ‘felt’ it had to cut away from a press conference with US defense secretary Gates and joint chiefs chair Pace just to cover Paris’s trip back to prison. Stewart characterized the frenzy as similar to the Black Nazarene procession in Quiapo, Manila. Paris was the Nazarene, he said.